Question

A network engineer is deploying wired 802.1X on Catalyst access switches so that corporate laptops authenticate against Cisco ISE before gaining network access. During testing, the laptops send EAP frames to the switch, which then relays the authentication exchange to ISE using RADIUS. In this 802.1X architecture, what is the specific role played by the switch?

Accepted Answer

Authenticator, because it controls port access and relays EAP over RADIUS to the authentication server

Answer

Supplicant, because it initiates the EAP session on behalf of the endpoint

Answer

Authentication server, because it validates the user credentials against the identity store

Answer

Policy enforcement point that terminates the EAP-TLS tunnel and issues the client certificate