Cisco Systems Using MAC Addresses to Exempt Traffic from Authentication and Authorization

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Cisco ASA Series Firewall CLI Configuration Guide
Chapter7 Configuring AAA Rules for Network Access
Using MAC Addresses to Exempt Traffic from Authentication and Authorization
ciscoasa(config)# aaa accounting match SERVER_AUTH inside AuthOutbound
AAA provides an extra level of protection and control for user access than using ACLs alone. For
example, you can create an ACL allowing all outside users to access Telnet on a server on the DMZ
network. If you want only some users to access the server and you might not always know IP addresses
of these users, you can enable AAA to allow only authenticated and/or authorized users to connect
through the ASA. (The Telnet server enforces authentication, too; the ASA prevents unauthorized users
from attempting to access the server.)
Using MAC Addresses to Exempt Traffic from Authentication
and Authorization
The ASA can exempt from authentication and authorization any traffic from specific MAC addresses.
For example, if the ASA authenticates TCP traffic originating on a particular network, but you want to
allow unauthenticated TCP connections from a specific server, you would use a MAC exempt rule to
exempt from authentication and authorization any traffic from the server specified by the rule.
This feature is particularly useful to exempt devices such as IP phones that cannot respond to
authentication prompts.