Home > Network Access Control > Shimel’s in Der Himmel & Stiennon’s A Mean-Un…NAC Dust-Up Part Deux.

Shimel’s in Der Himmel & Stiennon’s A Mean-Un…NAC Dust-Up Part Deux.

Fluxcapacitor
Nothing to see here folks.  Move along…

This is like a bad episode of "Groundhog Day" meets "Back To the Future." 

You know, when you wake every day to the same daymare where one person’s touting that features like NAC are the next flux capacitor while another compares its utility to that of sandpaper in the toilet roll dispensers in a truck stop restroom? 

I know Internet blog debates like this get me more excited than having my nipples connected to jumper cables and being waterboarded whilst simultaneously shocked with 1.21 Jigawatts…

Alan Shimel’s post ("Stiennon says NAC is dead – I must be in heaven!") in response to Stiennon’s entry ("Don’t even bother investing in Network Admission Control") is hysterical.

Why?

Because it’s the exact arguments (here and here) they had back in August 2007 when I refereed (see below) the squabble the first time around and demonstrated convincingly how they were both right and both wrong.  The silly little squabble — like most things — is all a matter of perspective.

I’d suggest that if you want a quick summary of the arguments without having to play blog pong, you can just read my summary from last year, as none of their arguments have changed.

/Hoff

P.S. The German word "himmel" translates to "heaven" (and sky) in English…funny given Shimmy’s post title, methinks…

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  1. May 3rd, 2008 at 09:48 | #1

    Chris- nice play on der himmel, extra points for that one. Hey I did not go looking for this one, Richard came to me. Of course we did leave out the feature vs product aspect on this go round. But you know the internet, nothing is ever new, it just goes round 'n round.
    alan

  2. July 21st, 2008 at 09:30 | #2

    Actually i did interviews with people in an organization – from CEO to Network Admin. They are all sceptical about NAC – nobody likes it too much, it creates huge complexities, and is very costly to implement and maintain.
    On the other hand, a lot of auditors are simply saying "you must have this" and writing it down in their reports. Needless to say, they haven't seen it work and haven't used it – but they have read the theory and the sales pitch – and it looks great.
    So the real operations people are stuck between the hammer and the hard place on this…. I really like to see what comes out in the long run
    Bozidar Spirovski http://www.shortinfosec.net

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