Napera

With JJ blogging about 802.1x, I thought it would be timely to talk about why I think small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) do not and probably never will deploy 802.1x for wired networks.

I make a point of meeting with customers whenever I can. Amongst the small and medium enterprise customers I’ve met, none have shown an interest in deploying 802.1x. The reason is simple – the problems solved by 802.1x do not justify the time and pain involved to setup and maintain it. Many of these customers would love to require everyone to identify themselves prior to joining the network, and want to keep risky machines off their network. They know this makes their networks healthier and easier to maintain. But I’ve yet to meet the customer willing to endure the complexity of 802.1x to get there.
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It’s fitting that my first blog post would be about the misfortune of a former employer. Prior to co-founding Napera in 2006, I was at Lockdown Networks for a short time. Since the news broke this week that Lockdown closed their doors, I’ve been asked for my insight. Specifically, people want to know whether Lockdown’s failure is due to their inability to execute or due to a non-existent NAC market.
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