How Secure Is Your Wireless Network? Safeguarding Your Wi-Fi LAN

Competing Standards

Keep in mind that EAP types are often proposed and supported by different vendors. For example, LEAP is backed by Cisco, PEAP is backed by Microsoft, Cisco, and RSA, while TTLS is backed by Funk Software and Certicom. MD5 and TLS, however, are both widely supported. When choosing an EAP method, it is important to consider who is the vendor behind the technology (Table 6.1).

As we have often seen in other areas of computing, market factors often drive the acceptance of technology standards.

Table 6.1. Common EAP methods.

Method	Typical Implementaion	Authentication Direction	WEP Key Generated?	Deployment Difficulty	Wireless Security
MD5	Challenge-based password	One-way authentication	No	Easy	Poor
TLS	Certificate-based two-way authentication ...