EAP-based authentication with EAP method selection mechanism

Wireless network has grown rapidly in the past few years due to its advantages over the wired network, such as mobility, flexibility, convenience, and rapid deployment. But it also introduces new security issues due to its nature, i.e. it does not need any physical access. One of the solutions to overcome the limitation of wireless network security is the IEEE 802.1X specification, a mechanism for port-based network access control, which is based on Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), an authentication framework that can support multiple authentication methods. We propose extension to the EAP framework for authentication method selection purpose, in order to reduce the number of fail authentication due to unsuitable EAP method used for the authentication. The selection will be based on some criteria such as the node resources, previous authentication and communication records.