Hi,
Machine authentication is when the computer itself authenticates, that can be done via peap or eap-tls (if certificates are deployed) the peap credentials are exchanged by the computer and the domain controller (kdc). So machine credentials get sent (username is the name of your computer hence that is one reason computer accounts have to be unique).
User authentication is the domain account that you use to login into the device.
The use case with machine authentication is to make things more simple, so that users do not have enter their credentials, or too add security when you combine machine authentication with user authentication. Cisco ACS and ISE have a feature called machine access restrictions which can restrict user authentications through a machine that has succeeded machine authentication (this prevents apple devices, and other devices from getting access to the network).
Thanks,
Tarik Admani
*Please rate helpful posts*
