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.

Project Update

The present project sees a more robust supplicant but has now reached a point where it would be impossible to achieve its aims within the present timescales. A new proposal to end the present project and start another phase to begin, the first quarter of next year (2009) is now being considered.

This next phase will include testing of Vista and Linux ports followed by a wider scale deployment. with case studies and installation & config files.

Questionnaire

A questionnaire intended to provide a quick snap shot of activities and views and to help inform the direction we take with development activities in this area is currently being circulated. If you happen to come accross it please do try and complete and return it.

New Supplicant Release

The latest supplicant release is v2.1.5 available from Sourceforge - This release has basic support for EAP-FAST. The EAP-FAST support is not fully interoperable yet, so its main purpose is to give a preview of the support, and to allow people to comment on it. Beyond that, this release fixes some bugs that were in the 2.1.4 release. Please see the change log, and release notes for more information.

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 OpenSEA Alliance have selected Mindtree for the porting of XSupplicant to Windows Vista and Linux. Mindtree is a global IT and R&D Services Company co-headquartered in the U.S. and India, rated amongst the top companies in the industry.

The first drop of the Vista builds available on request:

Note: These early drops are unstable and available for Wired service only.

In order to be kept up to date with this project, please subscribe to the project mailing list.

For more information, please contact Louis Searchwell, Technical Specialist: Authentication & Authorisation.