Implementation of an 802.1x supplicant for internet telephony

To prevent unauthorized devices from accessing private Local Area Networks (LANs), the IEEE 802.1 X standard combined with the related Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFC specification, the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), provide an access control mechanism for IEEE 802 LANs. EAP-enabled networks allow administrators to ensure that devices such as PCs and IP phones are authorized and authenticated to access the enterprise's LAN environment. These devices are also known as supplicants in 802.1 X terminology. This is a report on the implementation of an 802.1X supplicant for the BCM91101 reference IP phone platform at Broadcom Canada Ltd. This report includes a study of the 802.1 X framework and the EAP, as well as a review of the supplicant software development process including design, implementation and testing. The test results indicate that the implemented supplicant software consumes 983kB with the EAP-TLS method and 61kB with the EAP-MD5 method, with negligible CPU usage.