The Napera platform combines a hardware appliance with an Internet-based management portal to provide Network Access Control features for small to mid-sized organizations. The 1U network appliance is deployed on-site behind the existing corporate firewall and is primarily managed through an Internet-accessible portal at MyNapera.com. The vendor states that the 10-minute installation process consists of deploying the appliance in the LAN and subscribing to the portal (the first year of portal access is included in the price of the appliance).

The vendor notes that the MyNapera subscription is not strictly required for use of the N24; however, the real-time reporting, historical logs, and alerting capabilities are all features made available through MyNapera. After the first year, subscription pricing is $695/year.

Specific NAC features provided by the appliance include identity enforcement, endpoint health checks and quarantines, and guest access services.

Identity enforcement is provided via integration with Active Directory; with support for authentication schemes including optional Web portal-based authentication, 802.1x, or transparent monitoring of domain logins. Authenticated and healthy (more below) machine/user combinations can then be granted access roles to network resources in one of five categories: unrestricted, quarantined, guest, blocked, or exempt. Guests, in particular, can be limited to Internet and/or printer access.

To determine the health of the computer, the platform leverages Microsoft's Network Access Protection agent, available in Windows XP/Vista, to enforce anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall status on the endpoint as well as enforce proper operating system updates. For Mac OS X endpoints, the vendor provides a software agent that enables the health checking on that platform.

The N24 device itself offers 24 10/100/1000 ports and supports overall management of up to 200 devices. For larger organizations, an expansion unit is available (the N24S) with an additional 24 10/100/1000 ports plus 4 fiber ports (SFP miniGBIC). Each expansion unit supports an additional 100 devices, and up to 8 expansion units can be stacked and connected to the initial N24. Both the N24 and the N24S are 1U.

The vendor states that while the N24 leverages Microsoft NAP, a Windows 2008 Server deployment is unnecessary (though a Windows 2008 Server may be used for authentication and NAP processing, if desired).

Management features provided through the MyNapera service (IE 7+, Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, Chrome 1+) include real-time visibility, alerting, and reporting; encrypted communications; and a new Multiple Administrator Log-on feature as well as a "Configuration Snapshot" that allows for the automated online backup and recovery of N24 configurations.

Other new features in the latest Napera platform release (available free to current subscribers) include a built-in stateful inspection firewall, DHCP server, and remote access VPN capabilities. The VPN features, in particular, initially support only PPTP tunnels (to the tune of 5 concurrent users standard and up to 50 concurrent users maximum). The vendor states that Napera will support other VPN protocols in future releases.

Napera is available now; with the N24 appliance, the first year of MyNapera access, and one-year of hardware and software maintenance priced at $3,495.

Contact Napera Networks for further information.