Cisco Cisco SG300-28 28-Port Gigabit Managed Switch Maintenance Manual

Overview of 802.1X

Cisco Small Business 200, 300 and 500 Series Managed Switch Administration Guide (Internal Version) 

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This is described in the figure below:

A network device can be either a client/supplicant, authenticator or both per port. 

A client or supplicant is a network device that requests access to the LAN. The 
client is connected to an authenticator. 

If the client uses the 802.1x protocol for authentication, it runs the supplicant part 
of the 802.1x protocol and the client part of the EAP protocol. 

No special software is required on the client to use MAC-based or web-based 
authentication.

An authenticator is a network device that provides network services and to which 
supplicant ports are connected. 

The following authentication modes on ports are supported (these modes are set 
in Security > 802.1X/MAC/Web Authentication > Host and Authentication):

•

Single-host—Supports port-based authentication with a single client per 
port.

•

Multi-host—Supports port-based authentication with a multiple clients per 
port.

•

Multi-sessions—Supports client-based authentication with a multiple 
clients per port.