EAP / EAPOL failure

Hi all,

My first post here... Thought I might find some help or someone with a fairly decent knowledge of wireless protocols... Sooooo... My problem...

I bought an Edimax EW-7228APN ethernet bridge / wireless extender to connect my TV and PS3 to my TG582N router.

Since doing this I've noticed the following event in my routers event log every 10 minutes.

LOGIN wireless station [80:1f:02:xx:xx:xx] can't get authorized.

The MAC address matches that of my EW-7228APN but the box seems to connect to the router without problem.

Without the slightest idea what was happening I fired up Microsoft Network Monitor to see if I can find anything and it seemed to me that every 10 minutes the router sends some sort of challenge to the clients.

I'm assuming there's something wrong with my EW-7228APN's response to the challenge as I've never seen that event in the logs before.

Can anyone help explain what EAP / EAPOL is exactly (I tried reading about it but am still a bit confused as I can't see the need for authenticating if your connection is encrypted).

I'm wondering if it is possible to turn the challenge off would it be safe to do so?

Also, what would the consequence of the challenege failing be? Does it mean the bridge gets disconnected and reconnects every 10 minutes or would the router ignore the fact the challenge failed?

Cheers,

Daniel