No of supplicants that an authenticator can support

[email]vamsikrishna_time@rediffmail.com[/email] (vamsi) writes:[color=blue]
> Can you let me know which field in an EAP packet lets us know about
> the number of the number of supplicants that an authentiacator can
> support .[/color]

EAP doesn't have supplicants; that's 802.1X.

I'm not sure what your question means. Do you mean the number of
actual simultaneous authentication sessions that a given authenticator
could support? If so, then that's not in the packets at all. It
might be found in the documentation for the authentication server
you're using. It's likely to be unspecified.

Do you mean the number of EAP methods supported? If so, then, no,
that doesn't appear in the packets either. The client behaves as a
slave to the authenticator in EAP. When the EAP authenticator asks
for a particular item (EAP Request), the authenticatee (client) must
respond with either the requested item (EAP Response) or a message
saying "sorry, I don't know what you're saying" (EAP Nak).

The number of supported methods (and the identity of them) might be
listed in the product documentation. But be aware that an EAP server
as implemented in either an 802.1X access device or a PPP server may
well just be a proxy to an external RADIUS or DIAMETER server. In
that case, it's really the capabilities of that backend authentication
server that are of interest.

--
James Carlson, IP Systems Group <james.d.carlson@sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.234W Vox +1 781 442 2084
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