The days for network engineers are changing. Five years ago networking was only focusing on switches and routers. These days a lot of software applications make use or have a big impact on networking infrastructure. Therefore I think it’s important to stay up to date with these technologies. Everybody in this industry knows that Microsoft is soon launching it’s new Windows 2008 server platform. Part of the Windows 2008 server is the Network Policy Server. Network Policy Server will replace the current Internet Authentication Server(IAS). From a networking perspective we use the IAS server for e.g. to authenticate PC’s that are using 802.1x. Within the new Windows 2008 Server platform we have to configure this on the Network Policy Server.

On the web site WindowsNetworking.com I found a very good article from David Davis about the new Network Policy Server. See Understanding new Windows Server 2008 Network Policy Server. One of the reasons Microsoft changes the current IAS server is to support Network Access Protection (NAP). NAP can be used to check the system integrity before accessing the network. In the summary of the above mentioned article you can find a lot of links that provide you information about Network Access Protection. I found the introduction to NAP a good article.

I think that Microsoft NAP has a lot of potential in the market but combing NAP with a ProCurve networking infrastructure provides you a more dynamic IT infrastructure. If you combine NAP in the future with ProCurve Identity Driven Manager you will create a more dynamic and adaptive infrastructure that really controls the edge of the network together with client integrity.

Hewlett Packard  HP ProCurve Network Networking Microsoft Windows Network Access Protection Network Policy Server Windows 2008 Server