Subject: Re: Inherent problems in the NEA architecture

From: Bernard Aboba <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:18:04 -0700 (PDT)

> "NEA is applicable to computing environments of enterprises 
> where endpoints accessing the enterprise's network are owned 
> and/or expected to conform to the policies set forth by the 
> organization that owns and operates the network.  All other 
> cases are outside the scope of the NEA charter, since we do 
> not know that NEA would be useful in such cases."

I would like to point out that in a number of cases it is not possible for 
the host to determine what network it is connecting to.  For example, IEEE 
802.1X-2004 does not provide an equivalent to the Beacon offered by say, 
IEEE 802.11.  As a result, the host may not necessarily be able to 
determine what credentials to use, what information it can or should 
disclose, or even whether it is appropriate for it to make use of the 
remediation capabilities offered by the network it is connecting to. 

It has already been pointed out that the architecture described does not 
support mobility very well.   To provide some perspective on the 
impact of this, currently notebooks comprise more than 55% of all 
computers sold by revenue;  by the time that the NEA standards are 
complete, this may be closer to 75 or even 80 percent.

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