Patent ID: 8443419

Claim:
A pre-authentication method, comprising: receiving a pre-authentication message that carries a pre-authentication option; determining, according to the pre-authentication message, a Mobile Node (MN) to be pre-authenticated; establishing a pre-authentication binding relationship between a Candidate Authenticator (CA) and the MN, and setting an authentication state of the MN as pre-authenticated according to the pre-authentication message; sending an authentication request message to an Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) server to request authentication of the MN, wherein the authentication request message carries the pre-authentication option; receiving an authentication response message that is sent by the AAA server, wherein the authentication response message carries a pre-authentication key used between the CA and the MN; and sending the pre-authentication key to the MN; wherein: the pre-authentication message is an Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) initiation (EAP-Initiate) message or an EAP response (EAP-Rsp) message that is sent by a Serving Authenticator (SA) and carries a pre-authentication indication (Pre-auth Indication) flag or a CA identifier (CA_ID).