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Overview :
Aricent PNAC (Port Based Network Access Control) is a portable implementation of the IEEE Std 802.1X. It can be used in both LAN Switches and Wireless LAN Access Points (AP) for providing security services.
When used in LAN Switches, it offers access control to protected resources existing in the switched network. When used in WLAN APs, it not only provides authentication of the WLAN stations, but also improves security by making use of the periodically exchanged key for encrypting the data.
Aricent PNAC can easily be ported to different operating systems and switch hardware using well-defined external interfaces.
Figure 1. Aricent PNAC Architecture
Features :
- Supports Port based Authentication: in the case of point-to-point links, the frames are forwarded only if the port is authenticated.
- Supports MAC based Authentication: in the case of shared LANs, the frames are forwarded only if the sender (MAC address) is authenticated for that port.
- Interfaces with RADIUS Client for both authentication and key refreshing.
- Authenticator Supports EAP-MD5, TLS and TTLS Authentication mechanisms and supplicant supports EAP-MD5 authentication mechanism.
- Provides Local Authentication mechanism using which authentication is performed based on the locally configured username/passwords.
- Provides interface to communicate the session key to the WLAN driver, if present.
- Supports Supplicant functionality. A port can support both authenticatorPAE and supplicantPAE.
- Supports Access Control based on ACTIVE / INACTIVE configuration.
- Supports High-availability redundancy (optional).
- Supports all MIB objects as specified in the 802.1X standard.
- Provides SNMP and CLI based support for configuration and management.
- Conforms to Future Software Architecture for Portability (FSAP2), thus ensuring highly portable code, which uses flexible buffer and timer management libraries.
- Provides easy integration with different types of switch hardware from various vendors.
Benefits :
Aricent PNAC reduces the time to market for OEMs and VARs who wish to incorporate the security services into their switching/routing devices. It also provides easy portability and maintenance on multiple platforms.
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