ZyXEL ADSL Prestige 660HW-61 130122.0660HW61 Manual Do Utilizador

Prestige 660H/HW Series User’s Guide

Chapter 7 Wireless LAN Setup

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RADIUS is a simple package exchange in which your Prestige acts as a message relay 
between the wireless station and the network RADIUS server. 

The following types of RADIUS messages are exchanged between the access point and the 
RADIUS server for user authentication:

• Access-Request

Sent by an access point requesting authentication.

• Access-Reject

Sent by a RADIUS server rejecting access.

• Access-Accept

Sent by a RADIUS server allowing access. 

• Access-Challenge

Sent by a RADIUS server requesting more information in order to allow access. The 
access point sends a proper response from the user and then sends another Access-
Request message. 

The following types of RADIUS messages are exchanged between the access point and the 
RADIUS server for user accounting:

• Accounting-Request

Sent by the access point requesting accounting.

• Accounting-Response

Sent by the RADIUS server to indicate that it has started or stopped accounting. 

In order to ensure network security, the access point and the RADIUS server use a shared 
secret key, which is a password, they both know. The key is not sent over the network. In 
addition to the shared key, password information exchanged is also encrypted to protect the 
network from unauthorized access. 

EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) is an authentication protocol that runs on top of the 
IEEE802.1x transport mechanism in order to support multiple types of user authentication. By 
using EAP to interact with an EAP-compatible RADIUS server, the access point helps a 
wireless station and a RADIUS server perform authentication.