NAG still drawing crowds

摘要

SAN FRANCISCO - At this year's RSA Conference, there were fewer sessions and displays devoted to NAC than at previous conferences, but interest in the technology still seemed to run high.rnA panel about NAC's future packed a 250-seat meeting room to capacity, with most audience members indicating by a show of hands that they want Microsoft's version of NAC — network access protection (NAP) — to interoper-ate with Cisco's because they already use key products from both vendors.rnThe recent availability of all of NAP's components is triggering renewed interest in the technology, which Microsoft and other NAC players looked to exploit at the show.rnOne NAC vendor, Bradford Networks, announced it has a new appliance that imposes NAC on guest machines trying to gain network access. Great Bay Software made a similar announcement this week.rnAlso at the show, Microsoft hosted a booth with vendors whose NAC gear either interoper-ates with NAP or makes NAP compatible with client machines running other-than-Windows operating systems. Cisco, which promises its NAP-compliant NAC gear will be out in about a month, did not participate in the booth, which Microsoft dubbed "The 2008 NAP World TourTrnDespite the apparent interest at RSA, however, there is a wider impression that NAC isn't catching on, fueled by the demise of two NAC vendors (Lockdown Networks and Caymas Systems) over the past year and the repositioning of a third (Vernier Networks).