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Date:      Fri, 09 Nov 2001 22:40:28 +0100
From:      Andre Oppermann <oppermann@pipeline.ch>
To:        Pekka Nikander <pekka.nikander@nomadiclab.com>
Cc:        freebsd-net <freebsd-net@freebsd.org>, Marco Molteni <molter@tin.it>
Subject:   Re: A minimal IEEE 802.1x aka EAPOL implementation available
Message-ID:  <3BEC4D4C.EDFC47D0@pipeline.ch>

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Pekka Nikander wrote:
>   Hi,
> 
> My IEEE 802.1x EAPOL implementation is now minimally
> functional and tested.  It doesn't include any EAP modules,
> but the EAPOL state machines seem to work fine.
> 
> I'd appreciate if someone with more experience with netgraph
> would read the code and send comments how it should
> be improved so that it could be included into -CURRENT
> at some later date.  I'm especially worried about memory
> leaks, I've tried to check the paths to make sure that
> mbufs are always freed correctly, but most probably
> I have missed a case or two.
> 
> The code is available at
> 
> http://www.tml.hut.fi/~pnr/eapol/

I think it would be far cleaner to implement only the 802.1x packet
capturing/sending as a netgraph node, do some sanity checks and then
pass it off trough a socket to a userland daemon.

The userland daemon would then implement the various 802.1x authen-
tication methods required/possible. It could do this for example by
using already existing authentication methods available in libraries
like openssl.

Also by doing this in a userland daemon you would gain the possibility
to handle more interfaces in an easy way with configuration files.
This would also allow to specify more than one authentication key
for a given interface (think travelling users with different work
places and keys). These keys could be tried one after the other until
you get access.

It could also better interact with other userland services like login
or PAM. Think with logging in, it will authenticate you to the
(physical) network and the (ethernet) switch will put you into the
right VLAN for example. Or it could prompt for secure-id.

Probably it should even be recognized by the TrustedBSD components,
talk to <rwatson@freebsd.org> for that.

-- 
Andre


> Right now I have only tested it under 4.4-STABLE,
> but it shouldn't be too hard to modify it for -CURRENT.
> My problem is that I haven't got any test machines
> running -CURRENT available.
> 
> Yours,
> 
> --Pekka Nikander

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