802.1x timers

The 802.1x authentication procedure is controlled by a number of configurable timers and scalars. There are two separate sets, one for the EAPOL message exchange and one for the RADIUS message exchange.

EAPOL timers:

• transit-period

  Indicates how many seconds the Authenticator will listen for an EAP-Response/ID frame. If the timer expires, a new EAP-Request/ID frame will be sent and the timer restarted. The default value is 60. The range is 1 to 3600 seconds.

• supplicant-timeout

  This timer is started at the beginning of a new authentication procedure (transmission of first EAP-Request/ID frame). If the timer expires before an EAP-Response/ID frame is received, the 802.1x authentication session is considered as having failed. The default value is 30. The range is 1 to 300.

• quiet-period

  Indicates number of seconds between authentication sessions It is started after logout, after sending an EAP-Failure message or after expiry of the supplicant-timeout timer. The default value is 60. The range is 1 to 3600.

RADIUS timer and scaler:

• max-auth-req

  Indicates the maximum number of times that the router will send an authentication request to the RADIUS server before the procedure is considered as having failed. The default value is value 2. The range is 1 to 10.

• server-timeout

  Indicates how many seconds the authenticator will wait for a RADIUS response message. If the timer expires, the access request message is sent again, up to max-auth-req times. The default value is 60. The range is 1 to 3600 seconds.

The following figure shows sample EAPOL and RADIUS timers on the 7210 SAS.

Figure: 802.1x EAPOL timers (left) and RADIUS timers (right)

The router can also be configured to periodically trigger the authentication procedure automatically. This is controlled by the enable re-authentication and reauth-period parameters. Reauth-period indicates the period in seconds (since the last time that the authorization state was confirmed) before a new authentication procedure is started. The range of reauth-period is 1 to 9000 seconds (the default is 3600 seconds, one hour). Note that the port stays in an authorized state during the re-authentication procedure.