ZyXEL Communications Corporation G210H User Manual

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ZyXEL G-210H User’s Guide
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Chapter 3 Wireless LAN Network
3.2.3.2.1  EAP Authentication 
EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) is an authentication protocol that runs on top of the 
IEEE 802.1x transport mechanism in order to support multiple types of user authentication. By 
using EAP to interact with an EAP-compatible RADIUS server, an access point helps a 
wireless station and a RADIUS server perform authentication. 
The type of authentication you use depends on the RADIUS server and an intermediary AP(s) 
that supports IEEE 802.1x. The G-210H supports EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS and EAP-PEAP. 
Refer to 
For EAP-TLS authentication type, you must first have a wired connection to the network and 
obtain the certificate(s) from a certificate authority (CA). A certificate (also called digital IDs) 
can be used to authenticate users and a CA issues certificates and guarantees the identity of 
each certificate owner.
3.2.3.3  WPA and WPA2 
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) is a subset of the IEEE 802.11i standard. WPA2 (IEEE 
802.11i) is a wireless security standard that defines stronger encryption, authentication and 
key management than WPA. 
Key differences between WPA(2) and WEP are improved data encryption and user 
authentication.
Both WPA and WPA2 improve data encryption by using Temporal Key Integrity Protocol 
(TKIP), Message Integrity Check (MIC) and IEEE 802.1x. WPA and WPA2 use Advanced 
Encryption Standard (AES) in the Counter mode with Cipher block chaining Message 
authentication code Protocol (CCMP) to offer stronger encryption than TKIP.
If both an AP and the wireless clients support WPA2 and you have an external RADIUS 
server, use WPA2 for stronger data encryption. If you don't have an external RADIUS server, 
you should use WPA2-PSK (WPA2-Pre-Shared Key) that only requires a single (identical) 
password entered into each access point, wireless gateway and wireless client. As long as the 
passwords match, a wireless client will be granted access to a WLAN. 
If the AP or the wireless clients do not support WPA2, just use WPA or WPA-PSK depending 
on whether you have an external RADIUS server or not.
Select WEP only when the AP and/or wireless clients do not support WPA or WPA2. WEP is 
less secure than WPA or WPA2.