David Mackies Blue Brain

Let the fun begin, happy to let you catch me NAP’ing

I have recently done an implementation of Network Access Protection (NAP) for a Mid-Market Client, and we have delivered some benefits which were not part of our original planning.

I won’t go into too much about their specifics but will cover the scenario and some of the side benefits we achieved.

Even Better I’m going to build all this on SBS 2008 so it should be kind of generic and really quite fun for me to extend with the low end kit I may have lying around my Lab.

Oh but to make it into a deployment guide for both SBS 2008 AND EBS 2008, I have spoken with my friends in the Dell Sydney Office to borrow a Switch so I can really hang together a guide for a switch that is affordable but has all the features the big boys expect to see.Not Quite Fully agree’d so when I get it I will replicate the whole thing including the ACLs and Scripts.

Now today I got a notification of an update to the NAP Solution Accelerator, and giving it a quick look this morning without saying too much as it is a Beta Release I see that NAP is seen in the Rationalized to Dynamic area of the Core IO Model.

Mapping NAP technology into the Core IO Model

So given the high end nature of the benefits of NAP to provide Infrastructure Optimisation, I’m going to try to see how far down the cost and complexity stack I can drive.

Now my Lab is a little light on for hardware and most of the Server Infrastructure is Virtualized in WMware Server Version One, so the first steps will be baby ones and you can follow on further as we go.

In the coming days (more likely weeks) we will see what we can do with:

• SBS 2008 RC0
• LINKSYS SLM2008
• Wiretek Unmanaged 24 Port 10/100 Switch
• D-Link DWL-2000AP+ Wireless Access Point

and that is about all the kit hanging around gash in the lab right now so here we go first installation in a day or two … NAP DHCP on SBS 2008 with Windows XP SP3 Client.

What does that have to do with my Mid-Market Customers config or Project? Nothing but I don’t have a 802.1x Switch that supports Dynamic VLANs so you will have to wait until the Dell deal is done and I can get it in releasable documented form.

BTW my Mid-Market Client was using Nortel 5520 switches, and I don’t have one of them either so unless I can find one for a loan we need to wait for the Dell one.