3com 5500-SI Manual De Usuario

Centralized MAC address authentication controls accesses to a network through 
ports and MAC addresses. This kind of authentication requires no client software. 
When operating in centralized MAC address authentication mode, a switch begins to 
authenticate the user if it detects a new user MAC address.

Centralized MAC address authentication is implemented in the following two modes:

■

MAC address mode. In this mode, user MAC address is used as both the user 
name and the password.

■

Fixed mode. In this mode, user names and passwords are configured on the switch 
in advance. And users log on using the user names and passwords configured on 
the switch.

SWITCH 5500 series Ethernet switches support local authentication and RADIUS 
server authentication.

1 When a RADIUS server is used for authentication, the switch serves as a RADIUS 

client. In this case, centralized MAC address authentications are carried out as 
follows.

■

In MAC address mode, a switch sends newly detected MAC addresses to the 
RADIUS server as both the user names and passwords. The rest handling 
procedures are the same as that of 802.1x.

■

In fixed mode, a switch sends the user names and passwords configured for fixed 
mode on it to the RADIUS server. It also inserts user MAC addresses into the 
calling-station-id fields of the RADIUS packets sent to the RADIUS server. The rest 
handling procedures are the same as that of 802.1x.

■

The RADIUS server authenticates the user and grants the user the permission to 
access the network if the user passes the authentication.

2 When local authentication is used, users are authenticated by the switch. When 

configuring local authentication, note that:

■

For MAC address authentication mode, you need to provide MAC addresses as the 
user names and passwords. (The MAC addresses provided here need to be in the 
format of xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx, where the character x stands for a hexadecimal 
number ranging from 0 to f.)

■

For fixed mode, configure the user name and password as those for fixed mode.

■

Set local service type as LAN-access.