Designing Access Controls

Choose the Access Control Methods

 

Table 3-8.

Access Control Method by Administrative Workload

 

 

 

 

 

Factor

Private Wired

Public Wired

Private Wireless

Public Wireless

 

 

 

 

 

Administrative

Web-Auth

Web-Auth

Web-Auth

Web-Auth

workload

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Endpoints

What types of endpoints will connect to the network?

Not all endpoints support the three access control methods equally. Some access control methods are more dependent on particular hardware or software than others. With MAC-Auth, for example, the only required equipment is a NIC. Web-Auth, on the other hand, requires a Web browser, and 802.1X requires a supplicant.

Table 3-9summarizes the requirements for all three access control methods.

Table 3-9. Endpoint Compatibility of Access Control Methods

 

MAC-Auth

Web-Auth

802.1X

Supported endpoints

All endpoints

Most endpoints with user

Workstations and laptops

 

 

interfaces

with current OSs, newer

 

 

 

APs, printers, fax machines,

 

 

 

and some PDAs

Requirements for support

Only a standard NIC

Web browser support

OSs that include an 802.1X

 

 

 

supplicant:

 

 

 

• Windows Vista, XP (SP2),

 

 

 

 

2000 (SP3 or later)

 

 

 

• Mac OS X 10.3 or later

 

 

 

• Linux Red Hat 8.0 or 9.0

 

 

 

 

(WPA supplicant for

 

 

 

 

wireless access)

 

 

 

• SUSE Linux Enterprise 9

 

 

 

 

or 10 (WPA supplicant for

 

 

 

 

wireless access)

 

 

 

Third-party supplicants such

 

 

 

as:

 

 

 

 

Juniper Networks

 

 

 

 

Odyssey client

 

 

 

Xsupplicant for Linux

 

 

 

 

 

The capabilities of your endpoints necessarily dictate your access control method. Because all endpoints require a NIC to access the network, they automatically support MAC-Auth.

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