Techniques are provided for adaptive routing of authentication packets in a network, such as a wireless mesh network. At an authenticated device in the network, an authentication packet is received over the network from a device that is seeking authentication. The authentication packet is encapsulated for transmission in Layer 3 packets over an Internet Protocol (IP) tunnel to an authenticator device associated in the network. Similarly, for an authentication packet encapsulated in Layer 3 packets from the authenticator device over the IP tunnel, the authentication packet is decapsulated from the Layer 3 packets and transmitted over the network to the device seeking authentication.