The NAC interoperability debate

Posted by Ken Y-N on September 25th, 2008 at 04:28pm

With NAC, Network Access Control, being a hot topic and with the Trusted Computing Group’s (TCG) Trusted Network Connect (TNC) protocol leading the standardisation race, Cisco is being seen as a bit of a laggard in addressing the emerging standard.

During a panel session at Interop in New York recently, there was evidence of perhaps a bit of friction, according to a report of the proceeding in Internet Week, where they reported this exchange between representatives of Cisco and the TCG:

Surprisingly, though, the actual protocol specifications around NAC are not really the big concern for Cisco.

“I don’t care what the protocol is that handles this stuff,” O’Connell [Cisco] said. “What I care about is what the product does, since frankly at the end of the day the functional difference about protocol definitions become meaningless when it is time to implement.”

Hanna [TCG TNC] quickly pounced on O’Connell’s comment asking, “So if you don’t care about the bits — why don’t you just implement TNC? Apparently he does care because they’re not implementing the open standards.”

Catch the full story at Internet News here.

There’s also another view on the same panel session from Tim Greene at Network World here.

Tags: cisco, internet news, interop, network world

Under TNC Tags: cisco, internet news, interop, network world