Allied Telesis AT-9000 Series - Manual (Page 894)

Chapter 60: 802.1x Port-based Network Access Control
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Port Roles
Part of the task to implementing this feature is specifying the roles of the
ports on the switch. The roles are listed here:
 None
 Authenticator
None Role Switch ports in the none role do not participate in port-based access
control. They forward traffic without authenticating the clients of the
network devices. This is the default setting for the switch ports.
Note
A RADIUS authentication server cannot authenticate itself and must
communicate with the switch through a port that is set to the none
role.
Authenticator
Role
The authenticator role activates port access control on a port. Ports in this
role do not forward network traffic to or from network devices until the
clients are authenticated by a RADIUS server. The authenticator role is
appropriate when you want the switch to authenticate the clients of
network devices before they can use the network.
Note
There is also a supplicant role in 802.1x port-based network access
control. However, the AT-9000 Series switches do not support that
role. You can assign the ports to the none or authenticator role, but
not the supplicant role.