PacketFence is a fully supported, trusted network access control (NAC) solution. Boasting an impressive feature set including a captive-portal for registration and remediation, centralized wired and wireless management, powerful guest management options, 802.1X support, layer-2 isolation of problematic devices; PacketFence can be used to effectively secure networks small to very large heterogeneous networks.
Out-of-band Deployment
PacketFence’s operation is completely out-of-band which allows the solution to scale geographically and to be more resilient to failures. When using the right technology (like port security), a single PacketFence server can be used to secure hundreds of switches and many thousands nodes connected to them.
Voice over IP (VoIP) Support
Also called IP Telephony (IPT), VoIP is fully supported (even in heterogeneous environments) for multiple switch vendors (Cisco, Edge-Core, HP, LinkSys, Nortel Networks and many more).
Wireless Integration
PacketFence integrates perfectly with wireless networks. This allows you to secure your wired and wireless networks the same way using the same user database and using the same captive portal, providing a consistent user experience. Mixing access points (AP) vendors and wireless controllers is supported.
Registration of Devices
PacketFence supports an optional registration mechanism similar to “captive portal” solutions. Contrary to most captive portal solutions, PacketFence remembers users who previously registered and will automatically give them access without another authentication. Of course, this is configurable. An Acceptable Use Policy can be specified such that users cannot enable network access without first accepting it.