Enterasys Networks 9034385 manual NetSight Management, NetSight NAC Manager, Features, NAC Gateway

			NAC Solution Components
Table 1-3 Comparison of Appliance Advantages and Disadvantages (continued)
	Features	NAC Gateway	NAC Controller
	NAC Granularity	Advantage:	Disadvantage:
		The NAC Gateway is always aware of	While the Layer 2 NAC Controller
		the MAC address of the device	knows the MAC address of the
		connecting to the network, and its	connecting end-system and can obtain
		associated IP address, username,	the associated username, the Layer 3
		and location (switch IP address and	NAC Controller may not have this
		port). Therefore, NAC can be	information. Therefore, the Layer 3
		configured to uniquely authenticate,	NAC Controller lacks the ability to
		assess, and authorize specific end-	uniquely authenticate, assess, and
		systems and users in particular	authorize specific devices and users,
		locations in the network.	and implements NAC for all connected
			end-systems in the same way.
			Furthermore, Layer 2 and Layer 3
			NAC Controllers do not provide
			visibility down to the access layer port
			to which an end-system is connected,
			and cannot control access to the
			network based on switch access layer
			port connection.
	Scalability	Advantage:	Advantage:
		Very scalable because little if any	Very scalable because hardware-
		end-system data traffic is processed	based forwarding of data traffic using
		by the NAC Gateway (being out-of-	Enterasys-built custom ASICs is
		band). Therefore, an increased	implemented to achieve multi-gigabit
		number of end-systems are	throughput speeds for the NAC
		supported per NAC Gateway.	Controller.

NetSight Management

The NAC appliances are configured, monitored, and managed through management applications within the Enterasys NetSight Suite. NetSight is a family of products comprised of NetSight Console and a suite of plugin applications. Of the following NetSight applications, NetSight NAC Manager and NetSight Console are required for all four NAC deployment models, while NetSight Policy Manager and NetSight Inventory Manager are optional, depending on your network configuration and the network access control features you wish to implement. Following is a description of the NetSight applications.

NetSight NAC Manager

NetSight NAC Manager is a required core component in the Enterasys NAC solution. NAC Manager and NAC appliances work in conjunction to implement network access control. NAC Manager provides configurations for the assessment, authentication, authorization, and remediation parameters for all NAC appliances (NAC Gateways and NAC Controllers) from one centralized interface. After these configurations are enforced, the NAC appliances can detect, authenticate, assess, authorize, and remediate end‐systems connecting to the network according to those configuration specifications.

Enterasys NAC Design Guide 1-9