CycloneEAP
Embedded 802.1X / EAP Library

CycloneEAP is a 802.1X / EAP library dedicated to embedded applications. 802.1X standard specifies a protocol that prevents unauthorized access to a corporate LAN, by providing port-level authentication. The 802.1X protocol relies on EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) to manage various authentication methods, such as username/password and digital certificates.

CycloneEAP is available either as open source (GPLv2 license) or under a royalty-free commercial license (non-GPL license). We also propose an evaluation license (90-day license in source form) with technical support for an easier onboarding and effective evaluation of our software.

CycloneEAP EAP 802.1X

An 802.1X architecture involves 3 parties: a supplicant, an authenticator, and an authentication server.

  • The supplicant is a client device which wants to be authenticated.
  • The authenticator acts as a proxy between the client and the authentication server and controls the authorized/unauthorized state of the port. It is typically implemented on Ethernet switches.
  • The authentication server (generally a RADIUS server) verifies user's credentials and instructs the authenticator to authorize network access for the user.

Main Features

  • 802.1X supplicant implementation
  • Supports password-based authentication using EAP-MD5
  • Supports X.509 certificate-based mutual authentication using EAP-TLS
  • Supports TLS 1.3 with EAP-TLS (RFC 9190)
  • 802.1X authenticator implementation in pass-through mode
  • Supports RADIUS over UDP (RFC 2865)
  • IEEE8021-PAE-MIB to remotely manage and monitor the authenticator
  • Flexible memory footprint. Built-time configuration to embed only the necessary features
  • Portable architecture (no processor dependencies)
  • The library is distributed as a full ANSI C and highly maintainable source code

Supported Authentication Methods

  • EAP-MD5 (RFC 3748)
  • EAP-TLS (RFC 5216)
  • ARM Cortex-M3
  • ARM Cortex-M4
  • ARM Cortex-M7
  • ARM Cortex-M33
  • ARM Cortex-M85
  • ARM Cortex-R4
  • ARM Cortex-A5
  • ARM Cortex-A7
  • ARM Cortex-A8
  • ARM Cortex-A9
  • Legacy ARM7TDMI / ARM926EJ-S
  • RISC-V
  • MIPS M4K
  • MIPS microAptiv / M-Class
  • Infineon TriCore AURIX
  • PowerPC e200
  • Coldfire V2
  • RX600
  • AVR32
  • Xtensa LX6
  • Amazon FreeRTOS
  • SafeRTOS
  • ChibiOS/RT
  • CMSIS-RTOS
  • CMSIS-RTOS2
  • CMX-RTX
  • Keil RTXv4 and RTXv5
  • Micrium µC/OS-II and µC/OS-III
  • Microsoft Azure RTOS (ThreadX)
  • PX5 RTOS
  • Segger embOS
  • TI-RTOS (SYS/BIOS)
  • Zephyr RTOS
  • Bare Metal programming (without RTOS)
Toolchain / IDECompiler
MakefileGCC
AC6 System Workbench for STM32 (SW4STM32)GCC
Atollic TrueSTUDIOGCC
Espressif ESP-IDFGCC
HighTec Toolset for TriCoreGCC
IAR Embedded WorkbenchEWARM, EWRX
Infineon DAVEGCC
Keil MDK-ARMARM Compiler v5, ARM Compiler v6 (CLANG)
Microchip Studio (Atmel Studio)GCC
Microchip MPLAB XGCC, XC32
Microsoft Visual StudioMSVC
NXP MCUXpressoGCC
NXP S32 Design Studio (S32DS)GCC
Renesas e2StudioGCC, CC-RX
Segger Embedded StudioGCC
ST STM32CubeIDEGCC
Tasking VX-ToolsetVX-Toolset for TriCore
TI Code Composer Studio (CSS)GCC, TI-CGT

IEEE

  • IEEE Std 802.1X-2004: IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks - Port-Based Network Access Control

RFC

  • RFC 2865: Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)
  • RFC 2869: RADIUS Extensions
  • RFC 3579: RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) Support For EAP
  • RFC 3580: IEEE 802.1X Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) Usage Guidelines
  • RFC 3748: Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)
  • RFC 4137: State Machines for Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) Peer and Authenticator
  • RFC 5216: The EAP-TLS Authentication Protocol
  • RFC 9190: EAP-TLS 1.3: Using the Extensible Authentication Protocol with TLS 1.3