There have been remarkable growths in wireless communication networks in
recent years; this is because of its merits over the wired networks such as
Mobility and convenience. Wireless networks transmit the signal over the
open air via radio waves of different frequencies, this makes it to be
vulnerable to several attacks and anybody on the street can easily intercept the
wireless data or inject new data into the entire network. There has been
existence of wired equivalent privacy (WEP) protocol (IEEE 802.11i), which
was designed for wireless network security. There were concerns of security
vulnerabilities in WEP; this made it necessary for the implementation of
another solution to overcome the weaknesses of the previous wireless
network security. The IEEE 802.1X (port-based network admission control)
which is defined on Extensible Authentication protocol (EAP) provides
effective and efficient admission control to wireless and other networks
devices [8].
Our thesis investigates the efficiency of NAC (IEEE 802.1X) as a security
solution, access different vendor solutions, protocols supported and look into
the inter-operability of these various vendors. In as much as we support the
premise of NAC being an excellent solution, we will also make brilliant
recommendations in this thesis to be considered for future refinements of this
security solution as well as deployment scenarios for the university network.
2010.