Performance Analysis of Microsoft Network Policy Server and FreeRADIUS Authentication Systems in 802.1x based Secured Wired Ethernet using PEAP

IEEE 802.1x is an industry standard to implement physical port level security in wired and wireless Ethernets by using RADIUS infrastructure. Administrators of corporate networks need secure network admission control for their environment in a way that adds minimum traffic overhead and does not degrade the performance of the network. This research focuses on two widely used Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) servers, Microsoft Network Policy Server (NPS) and FreeRADIUS to evaluate their efficiency and network overhead according to a set of pre-defined key performance indicators using Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP) in conjunction with Microsoft Challenged Handshake Authentication Protocol version 2 (MSCHAPv2). The key performance indicators – authentication time, reconnection time and protocol overhead were evaluated in real test bed configuration. Results of the experiments explain why the performance of a particular authentications system is better than the other in the given scenario.