An authentication process - such as a RADIUS server or access point-based authentication - to manage WLAN user authentication, connection attributes, and other matters related to setting up and securing the WLAN connection. While the 802.1X protocol does not recommend one authentication process over another, the market has overwhelmingly adopted RADIUS as the preferred authentication process on WLANs for several compelling reasons:

• With RADIUS, authentication is user-based rather than device-based, so, for example, a stolen laptop does not necessarily imply a serious security breach.
• RADIUS eliminates the need to store and manage authentication data on every AP on the WLAN, making security considerably easier to manage and scale.
• RADIUS has already been widely deployed for other types of authentication on the network

Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), and EAPoL (EAP over LAN) - EAPoL is the transport protocol used to negotiate the WLAN user's secure connection to the network. Security is handled by vendor-developed "EAP authentication types", which may protect credentials, data privacy, or both.