Authentication and Access Control Architecture for Software Defined Networks

In this work, we propose a host authentication and access control architecture for software defined networks. The key idea is to authenticate at Layer 2, using IEEE 802.1X standard and Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). EAP exchanges authentication information between the supplicant host and a RADIUS authentication server. We developed the proposed authenticator as an OpenFlow application on top of POX controller. The authenticator blocks or accepts network traffic from supplicant depending on the authentication success.