eap Mailing List: RFC-3579

[Suresh (sureshvv]

Hi
I have the following doubts in RFC-3579.

RFC-3579:

      The NAS places EAP messages received from the authenticating peer
      into one or more EAP-Message attributes and forwards them to the
      RADIUS server within an Access-Request message.  If multiple
      EAP-Message attributes are contained within an Access-Request or
      Access-Challenge packet, they MUST be in order and they MUST be
      consecutive attributes in the Access-Request or Access-Challenge
      packet.  The RADIUS server can return EAP-Message attributes in
      Access-Challenge, Access-Accept and Access-Reject packets.

      When RADIUS is used to enable EAP authentication, Access-Request,
      Access-Challenge, Access-Accept, and Access-Reject packets SHOULD
      contain one or more EAP-Message attributes.  Where more than one
      EAP-Message attribute is included, it is assumed that the
      attributes are to be concatenated to form a single EAP packet.

      Multiple EAP packets MUST NOT be encoded within EAP-Message
      attributes contained within a single Access-Challenge,
      Access-Accept, Access-Reject or Access-Request packet.

My question
a) When can authenticating peer/RADIUS-Server send multiple EAP messages?
Has
it got any thing to do with fragmentation?

b) Can some one please tell me what is differentiating an EAP message with
an
EAP packet?

thanks
Suresh.