I have a Dell PowerConnect 5324 with the newest firmware and boot code.
I am trying to get 802.1x port authentication working with a Microsoft IAS server running on Windows Server 2003. 802.1x port authentication functions normally on the 5324 if a user performs the authentication after Windows XP is already logged into. We are using PEAP (MSCHAPv2)
What we want working is machine authentication where the system authenticates to the switch and is provided network access before a user logs in. Microsoft Windows XP is capable of this type of 802.1x authentication by providing the computer name/password to IAS. It appears that the switch is getting confused by machine authentication where the username is of the form host/machine.domain.com.
I have a packet sniffer setup and when machine authentication is attempted, no traffic is sent to the IAS server at all. When user authentication is used, everything work fine as stated above.
Does anyone know if the 5324 supports machine based 802.1x auth?