Setting up port-based 802.1x authentication in a FortiLink setup

This cookbook article documents how to set up port-based 802.1x authentication. The following tasks are covered:

• Configuring the FortiGate and FortiSwitch units
• Configuring the RADIUS server
• Configuring Windows 10

802.1x is an IEEE Standard for port-based Network Access Control (PNAC).

The following are the main parts of 802.1x authentication:

• A supplicant—the user or client that wants to be authenticated
• An authentication server—the actual server doing the authentication, typically a RADIUS server. It decides whether to accept the end userʼs request for full network access.
• An authenticator—a network device that provides a data link between the client and the network and can allow or block network traffic between the two, such as an Ethernet switch or wireless access point

802.1x uses the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) to facilitate communication from the supplicant to the authenticator and from the authenticator to the authentication server.