Support for 802.1x Authentication in a device not supporting it earlier

I am working on an embedded system with linux kernel 2.6.10 which is not supporting 802.1x authentication mode in wired network. It will be helpful if there are any specific pointers on how to proceed to have this authentication. And wanted to know whether it is sufficient to change kernel level driver (upgrade it) or will it need changes from the Application layer also? (Atleast from the protocol specifications about IEEE 802.1x my understanding is this authentication happens at lower layer itself) Tha开发者_开发百科nks in Advance.

I have got the answer for this. I needed to have wpa_supplicant with its dependancies to be built. I was able to build and cross compile them successfully.