[clug] Pop quiz.. (DHCP and servers).

[Daniel Pittman]

jm <jeffm at ghostgun.com> writes:

> Half true from what I've been told.  First anything I say may be
> Entrasys specific as the guy I just asked about this is an Entrasys
> specialist. Any mistakes here are mine. You have been warned.

> Your right in that various versions of operating systems have varying
> levels of support of 802.1x. The latest versions of windoze, and mac
> support it out of the box.

*nod*  OTOH, many businesses still have older revisions of Windows and
MacOS, which have less support — I think I was more absolute in my
description than I intended and didn't suggest that, though.

> Linux definately has support although I'm not sure which distros have
> it has a standard package.

All the major distributions ship 802.1x support software, but very few
of them make it easy to use during installation, and in many cases, even
post deployment.

> In order to get around this your network infrastructure needs a fall
> back strategy. I know Entrasys will support fall back methods such as
> mac addresses and snooping on other authentication protocols to select
> the correct policy to apply to the switch port the device is plugged
> into.

*nod*  Picking the right 802.1x implementation can make a big
difference.  I have no specific Entrasys experience, so can't comment on
how well it works, but if it manages fallbacks like protocol snooping
I expect it to be fairly smooth. :)

Regards,
        Daniel