802.1X Supplicant
JANET(UK) is participating in a project to develop and test the open sourced 802.1x OpenSEA Supplicant, to facilitate use of the JANET Roaming Service.
At present, JANET Roaming permits two types of network access technology: the simple to use, yet inherently insecure, web redirect; and IEEE 802.1x, widely acknowledged as the current best practice secure solution but requiring a software ‘supplicant’ to run on all connected nodes. IEEE 802.1x has recently been mandated by eduroam as the only technology that should be used by members of the eduroam federation.
Experience within the educational sector suggests that the IEEE 802.1x client (or “supplicant”) supplied by Microsoft with Windows XP and Vista has some significant limitations which are impeding adoption of IEEE 802.1x within the community both in the context of JANET Roaming and network admission applications in general.
To address this, JANET(UK) has joined the OpenSEA Alliance as a contributory board member (See press release). The Alliance are developing an open source 802.1x supplicant.
802.1x Special Interest Group main objective are to bring together members of the community with invited input from members of industry and the wider European community. The group will focus on the direction of the supplicant and any future developments along with identifying and prioritising any 802.1x key issues.
For full details of Draft Terms of Reference click here
OpenSEA Supplicant Selected for Wi-Fi Alliance's WPA Test Bed
We are pleased to announce that the OpenSEA 802.1X supplicant has been accepted into the Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) testbed. The acceptance is an important milestone in the development of open security standards for wireless networking and continues the momentum towards OpenSEA’s goal of promoting the development and distribution of an open source 802.1X supplicant. (See press release)
New Supplicant Release
Anyone interested in trying the Open1X Supplicant can download if from Sourceforge:
Both the JANET(UK) and OpenSEA Alliance would welcome any feedback on the Open1X Supplicant. This should be sent to opensea-support@lboro.ac.uk. We are unable to provide direct support with using the supplicant but we’d be grateful for any feedback on its functionality and usability.
Cross Platform Porting of XSupplicant
The latest stable release with support for Windows XP, and Linux (both x86 and x64X) supplicant is Version 2.2.0.710 available at Sourceforge (http://open1x.sourceforge.net/).
In order to be kept up to date with this project and receive news of the latest release code, please subscribe to the project mailing list.
For more information, please contact Louis Searchwell, Technical Specialist: Authentication & Authorisation.