At the moment, I am going through the updated 802.1X training from Cisco, and there it is: A term that comes up now and then: EAPoW for EAP over Wireless.
Is there something like EAPoW? Let\u2019s dig a little bit deeper.
\u27a1\ufe0f Regardless of Ethernet or WLAN, 802.1X Authentication is always of type\u00a00x888e; both wired and wireless.
\u27a1\ufe0f In the 802.11 standard, there is no term EAPoW.
\u27a1\ufe0f In the 802.1X standard, there is no term EAPoW.
\u27a1\ufe0f RFC 4017 \u201eExtensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) Method Requirements for Wireless LANs\u201c doesn\u2019t mention EAPoW (or EAPoL).
(I didn’t expect that; but looked it up for completeness)
\u2757\ufe0f But the 802.1X standard has some clear definitions:
Already in 802.1X-2001, they include Wireless LANs as in-scope: \u201c\u2026 and associations between stations and access points in IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs.”
And: \u201eIEEE Std 802.1X-2001 enables authenticated access to IEEE 802 media, including Ethernet, Token Ring, and IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs.\u201c
802.1X-2010 defines a LAN in the following way:
IEEE 802 Local Area Network (LAN): IEEE 802 LANs (also referred to in the text simply as LANs) are LAN technologies that provide a MAC Service equivalent to that defined in ISO\/IEC 15802-1. IEEE 802 LANs include IEEE Std 802.3 (CSMA\/CD), IEEE Std 802.11 (Wireless), and IEEE Std 802.17 (Resilient Packet Ring).
And it also states that in section 11.1 : \u201eThe complete format of an EAPOL frame \u2018on the wire\u2019 or \u2018through the air\u2019 depends not only \u2026 \u201c
802.1X-2020 removes some outdated definitions but keeps WLAN:
IEEE 802 Local Area Network (LAN): An instance of a LAN technology that provides a MAC Service equivalent to that defined in IEEE Std 802.1AC. IEEE 802 LANs include IEEE Std 802.3 (CSMA\/CD) and IEEE Std 802.11 (Wireless).
This shows that there was no extra definition for the \u201eover Wireless\u201c transport.
And when talking about EAPoL in Cisco ISE courses, I typically explain that a LAN is not the same as Ethernet, but that we have to read it as \u201ea transport over our used Data Link Layer\u201c.
But there is even more:
There are documents from around 25 years ago (much earlier than I was in enterprise WLAN), which used the term EAPoW for the wireless implementation of EAPOL and defined an EAPoW-Key for distributing WEP keys to clients. This was long before 802.11i, or WPA\/WPA2, was published, and the term didn\u2019t make it into the standard.
Coming back to the mentioned 802.1X training, they also state:
\u201eEAPoW is not an official protocol name and is an informal term that is often used to refer to the use of EAPoL in wireless environments.\u201c
I do not think that using this term makes any sense for understanding this topic because it is EAPoL in both cases. But it\u2019s not as bad as using a small \u201ex\u201c in 802.1X!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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