Juniper Networks Steel-Belted Radius Appliance

Steel-Belted Radius Appliance Overview:

Enterprises and government agencies worldwide must keep their networks secure, authenticating, and managing users who require local and remote network access. Many of these organizations and their networks are authenticating more users daily or hourly than some of the world’s busiest service providers. It’s critical for global organizations to select and deploy the most powerful and reliable AAA and RADIUS solution to manage and authenticate local, remote, and wireless LAN (WLAN) users. A superior, robust, dependable device such as Juniper Networks Steel-Belted Radius Appliance delivers the ideal AAA/RADIUS solution with the easy integration and operational simplicity of a network appliance.

Steel-Belted Radius Appliance is a stand-alone AAA/RADIUS network device that combines the power and flexibility of Juniper Networks® SBR Series Steel-Belted Radius Servers, the industry’s leading family of AAA/RADIUS server products and a de facto standard, with the convenience of a dedicated appliance that easily integrates into any network environment.

Available for both the Juniper Networks Steel-Belted Radius Enterprise Edition and Juniper Networks Steel-Belted Radius Global Enterprise Edition, the SBR Appliance permits you to deliver and enforce a uniform, consistent security policy for all of your users—whether they access your network remotely via a VPN, through a firewall, or locally over a wireless or wired LAN secured by the 802.1X standard. The SBR Appliance also delivers the performance, scalability, and reliability to handle any traffic load, and fully supports any network infrastructure.

The Steel-Belted Radius Appliance is a complete implementation of the widely used RADIUS protocol in a network device. The SBR Appliance performs three vital functions:

• Authentication—Validating a user’s login credentials against a central security database to ensure that only individuals with valid credentials are granted network access.
   
• Authorization—For each new connection, providing information to the network access device such as the IP address to use, session time-limit information, or which type of authentication protocol or method to use.
   
• Accounting—Logging all user and administrative connections, including user names and connection durations, for tracking and billing purposes.

The SBR Appliance enables you to centrally enforce your organization’s security policies. From a single, centralized SBR Appliance, you can specify who is authorized to access your network, manage users’ secure network connections, ensure that their connections are configured correctly, and control the way users connect to and what resources they can access on your network. It also aids in accounting for a user’s actions while they are connected to your network.

The SBR Appliance ensures reliable network uptime, provides flexible and powerful user management, and is standards-based, delivering compatibility with virtually any and every network environment. Suitable for any organization that desires the reliability, flexibility, and interoperability necessary to authenticate, manage, and account for tens of thousands of users but prefers the ease of a network appliance, SBR Appliance delivers convenience and manageability. It lowers total cost of ownership through quick deployment, reducing maintenance and overhead, automating upgrades, and requires no parts sourcing. It also delivers the performance to handle the busiest networks or to easily scale to accommodate a growing network.

Value Proposition

Decreases Costs and Overhead While Increasing Return on Investment (ROI).

• Provides multivendor, multiple authentication method support
• Employs powerful, dynamic troubleshooting and diagnostic tools along with robust reporting features
• Provides strong security out-of-the box

Eases Deployment, Administration, and Maintenance

• Simplifies user and network configuration and maintenance
• Offers easy-to-use, customizable administrative controls
• Centralizes user management and key replication with innovative, time saving automated tools and processes
• Enables multiple user modifications and additions to be done simultaneously

Scalable, Robust Authentication and Access Control

• Offers the best, most appropriate functionality for your environment
• Supports wired and wireless network deployments
• Provides the latest standard security protocols
• Enforces any authentication method
• Empowers administrators through enhanced security controls

Architecture and Key Components

Centrally Manage and Secure Network Authentication
When combined with the enterprise-built, 802.1X-compatible Juniper Networks Odyssey Access Client, the SBR Appliance provides a complete, seamless network security solution. The SBR Appliance and OAC combine to ensure that only authorized users access the network; that user connections are configured correctly, whether the user is connecting via WLAN, remote/VPN, or wired 802.1X; and that user and network credentials and data remain secure. Together, OAC and the SBR Appliance deliver powerful network access policy management, robust user authentication, and durable network security—with unparalleled network control, usability, and speedy deployment.

Features & Benefits:

Appliance Simplicity with Robust Security

The dedicated SBR Appliance offers many security advantages that surpass standard, multipurpose servers. The hardened operating system of the SBR Appliance has been tailored specifically to support the RADIUS standard, providing strong security out-of-the box and eliminating most common avenues of operating system attack. Also, the removal of unnecessary operating system modules eradicates the need for constant patching, lowering an organization’s administrative burden.

Steel-Belted Radius Appliance with SBR Enterprise Edition

The SBR Appliance running SBR Enterprise Edition works with whatever network access equipment you’ve chosen for your network, regardless of vendor. It supports heterogeneous networks, easily interfacing with network access equipment from different vendors by automatically communicating with each device in the language it understands, based on customized dictionaries that describe each vendor’s and device’s extensions to the RADIUS protocol. Whether you’ve set up WLAN, remote/VPN, wired 802.1X, dial-in, outsourced, or any other form of network access in any combination, the SBR Appliance with SBR EE can manage the connection of all users regardless of access method.

The SBR Appliance with SBR EE logs all authentication transactions, so you’ll be able to view the entire history of authentication requests and the resulting responses. If your access device supports RADIUS accounting, you’ll also be able to track how long each user stays connected and even be able to see exactly who’s connected at any time and on which port. With the SBR Appliance, all of the information you need on RADIUS activity is at your fingertips.

Steel-Belted Radius Appliance with SBR Global Enterprise Edition

The industry-tested SBR GE, operational around-the-clock in some of the most active networks in the world, continues to demonstrate the reliability, flexibility, and interoperability required to authenticate, manage, and account for tens of thousands of users.

With the SBR Appliance running SBR GE, organizations can take advantage of the breadth of capabilities available in the SBR Enterprise Edition, while enjoying many additional features designed specifically for the world’s largest, most active networks. Organizations can safely implement an SBR Appliance running SBR GE as the centerpiece of their network security and access control environment.

In addition to the features listed above for the SBR Appliance running SBR EE, the SBR Appliance running SBR GE includes specialized features that exceed the unique AAA requirements of global organizations managing thousands of users across multiple sites:

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Diagram:

SBR EE and SBR GE—Edition Description and Audience:

Comparing Steel-Belted Radius Server and Appliance Features:

Technical Specifications:

Documentation:

Download the Juniper Networks Steel-Belted Radius Appliance Datasheet (PDF).