I was wondering what the point of Shared Secrets are on RADIUS servers if I set the secret in the Cisco switch configuration. If the supplicant wanting to be authenticated does not have to know it, what is the point?
Thanks
I was wondering what the point of Shared Secrets are on RADIUS servers if I set the secret in the Cisco switch configuration. If the supplicant wanting to be authenticated does not have to know it, what is the point?
Thanks
The shared secret between a RADIUS server and a NAS (network access server - in your case the switch) serves several purposes:
RADIUS secrets authenticate the communication between the RADIUS client (the switch) and the RADIUS server. The intent of the RADIUS protocol is to abstract the authentication (authorization and accounting) away from the endpoint. There still needs to be some kind of authentication between the RADIUS client and server to insure that only authentic RADIUS clients and servers are communicating with each other.