Understanding the Administrative State of the Authenticator Port

The administrative state of an authenticator port can take any of the following three states:

• Force authorized—Allows network access to all users of the port without requiring them to be authenticated. This is equivalent to not having any authentication enabled on the port.

• Force unauthorized—Denies network access to all users of the port. This is equivalent to disabling the port.

• Automatic—This is the default mode where the authentication server response determines if the port is opened for traffic or not. Only the successfully authenticated clients are allowed access, all others are denied.

In Junos OS, the default mode is “automatic.” The “force authorized” and “force unauthorized” admin modes are not supported. You can achieve the functionality of “force authorized” mode by disabling dot1x on the required port. You can achieve the functionality of “force unauthorized” mode by disabling the port itself.