Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) is an authentication framework frequently used in network and internet connections. It is defined in RFC 3748, which made RFC 2284 obsolete, and is updated by RFC 5247. EAP is an authentication framework for providing the transport and usage of material and parameters generated by EAP methods. There are many methods defined by RFCs, and a number of vendor-specific methods and new proposals exist. EAP is not a wire protocol; instead it only defines the information from the interface and the formats. Each protocol that uses EAP defines a way to encapsulate by the user EAP messages within that protocol's messages.