Climbing the PacketFence: Implementing Open Source NAC in a Corporate Environment

Explore the challenges and successes of implementing PacketFence, an open-source Network Access Control (NAC) solution, in a corporate environment. Learn about the complexities of deploying 802.1x port authentication across geographically dispersed offices, including centralized logging, user and node data synchronization, software configuration management, multi-department coordination, and networking architectural challenges. Discover how Indeed embraced open-source ideology to overcome obstacles and successfully implement a comprehensive NAC service. Gain insights into the benefits of PacketFence, such as username-to-IP-to-MAC address correlation, iplogs, locationlogs, device discovery, inventory management, and user auditability. Understand the ongoing challenges of maintaining and updating a rapidly evolving key infrastructure component. Follow the journey from project goals and evaluation to deployment, current status, and future plans, while learning valuable lessons for implementing open-source NAC solutions in complex corporate environments.

Introduction
Project Goals
Evaluation Process
Features
Environment
Hardware
Authentication
Deployment
Second Phase
Current Status
Painful Lessons
Network Access Control
Open Source
The Future