Editing Extensible Authentication Protocol (section)

{{Short description|Authentication protocol for the point-to-point protocol}}
'''Extensible Authentication Protocol''' ('''EAP''') is an authentication framework frequently used in network and internet connections. It is defined in {{IETF RFC|3748}}, which made {{IETF RFC|2284}} obsolete, and is updated by {{IETF RFC|5247}}.
EAP is an authentication framework for providing the transport and usage of material and parameters generated by EAP methods. There are many methods defined by RFCs, and a number of vendor-specific methods and new proposals exist. EAP is not a [[wire protocol]]; instead it only defines the information from the interface and the formats. Each protocol that uses EAP defines a way to encapsulate by the user EAP messages within that protocol's messages.

EAP is in wide use. For example, in [[IEEE 802.11]] (Wi-Fi) the WPA and WPA2 standards have adopted IEEE 802.1X (with various EAP types) as the canonical authentication mechanism.