Enterasys Networks 9034385 manual Appliance Comparison, 2 Comparison of Appliance Functionality

NAC Solution Components

Appliance Comparison

The following table compares how the two NAC appliance types implement the five NAC functions.

Table 1-2 Comparison of Appliance Functionality

NAC Function

Detection

Authentication

Assessment

Authorization

Remediation

NAC Gateway	NAC Controller
RADIUS authentication request is	Traffic sourced from a new end-system
received from access edge switches.	traverses the inline appliance.
For user authentication, RADIUS	It is possible to disable authentication on
authentication requests are proxied to	the NAC Controller and rely instead on the
an upstream RADIUS server which	authentication of the end-system by
contains a database of valid user	downstream infrastructure devices, such as
credentials.	authenticating to a wireless LAN or VPN
For device authentication, the NAC	concentrator.
Gateway can locally validate whether	Alternatively, the NAC Controller supports
the connecting MAC address is	MAC registration where the end user must
permitted network access.	provide a valid username and password,
	verified via LDAP, before being allowed to
	register to the network.
Assessment can be implemented using	Assessment can be implemented using
localized, integrated agent-based and/	localized, integrated agent-based and/or
or agent-less assessment1 or external	agent-less assessment1 or external agent-
agent-based and/or agent-less	based and/or agent-less assessment using
assessment using a bank of external	a bank of external assessment servers
assessment servers (Nessus and	(Nessus and Lockdown Enforcer) for
Lockdown Enforcer) for maximum	maximum assessment scalability.
assessment scalability.
The SNS-TAG-ITA Gateway appliance
provides integrated assessment
servers.
For Enterasys access edge switches,	End-system's traffic is assigned a policy (a
the end-system is assigned a policy (a	set of granular traffic forwarding rules) at
set of granular traffic forwarding rules)	the NAC Controller, based on
and/or VLAN based on the	authentication and assessment results.
authentication and assessment results.
For third-party edge switches, the end-
system is assigned a VLAN via RFC
3580 Tunnel attributes based on the
authentication and assessment results.
Captive web portal is served by the	Captive web portal is served by the NAC
NAC Gateway.	Controller.

1. A separate license for integrated assessment functionality is required.

Enterasys NAC Design Guide 1-7