Ixia Launches Testing Tool for NAC

Testing 802.1X is one part of network access control capacity planning, but other issues--like pre- and post-connect assessment, in-line traffic capacity and, in the case of IDS monitoring, keeping up with high session counts and high bit rates--will be gating factors. Mike Fratto NWC Technology Editor

Testing vendor Ixia recently debuted a testing tool specifically aimed at testing authentication on routers and switches, including Layer 2 and Layer 3 testing of Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC).

IxNetwork 5.30 enables enterprises to test network switch authentication functions necessary for NAC. Tests can be run across all access methods to ensure--prior to live deployment--that network access is properly granted only to compliant endpoint devices. As an example, the Ixia test equipment can test whether a switching fabric is properly verifying the state of a user's OS or antivirus software to ensure security policy compliance. A single test can be scaled to emulate tens of thousands of users, the vendor said, providing a good simulation of live conditions.

IxNetwork 5.30 utilizes Ixia's Ethernet Load Modules to emulate supplicants and perform data plane traffic generation and analysis. It provides data plane performance metrics, including throughput and latency.