EAP based authentication feature

5G NR
1

Hi All…
Does anybody know if the EAP based authentication is a mandatory or optional feature on the UE in case of NR?

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2

Hi…
In 5G NR mainly there are two mandatory authentication options:

  1. 5G Authentication and Key Agreement (5G-AKA)
  2. Extensible/Extensive Authentication Protocol (EAP)-AKA.

As far as i know, which type of Key to be used decided by ARPF(Authentication credential Repository and Processing Function) which intern, Its up to the operator to decide which type of authentication procedure to use and for your information Optionally, other EAP based authentication mechanisms are also allowed in 5G such as private networks(which are Non 3GPP technologies like WLANs).

So considering the above, UE must support both authentication options. thus EAP also a mandatory feature but

I am also little bit confused here…what if operators/vendors decide to use 5G-AKA, than it might not be the mandatory feature in future… (However there is no much difference between this 2 types, just some HXRES(hashed version of XRES) is the extra in 5G-AKA.

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