The term network access server does have a technical definition. But these technical definitions do not give any information to the ordinary people. It is better to give examples to make the meaning of the technical terms clear. There is some resources. These are of course protected. Let us say that the resources are the printers. The client wants an access to the printer. He requests for it. The network access server guards the resources. The client will first connect to the network access server. This will in turn connect to another resource.

The network access server will ask the question: is this client allowed to use these protected resources? In our case the network access server will ask the question: is this client allowed to use the printer? If the answer is yes, then this network access server will give the access to the printer as per client’s request. If the answer is no, then the network access server denies the access to the client and the client can not use the printer.

The network access server does not have any information about any of the clients.

The network access server does not have any information regarding the nature of the resource it is protecting. The network access server does not know whether they are protecting the files or printers or internet connections.

The credentials for accessing the resources are given by the clients. In our example, the client will know that he has access to use the printer and so he will send his credentials to the network access server. The network access server will simply forward these credentials to another resource. This resource has the capacity to verify the credentials supplied by the clients. The validity of these credentials is determined by that resource and conveyed to the network access server.

The network access server will work as per the validation result supplied by the validation resources. Let me give another example to make this idea of network access server still clearer. We know wi fi connections. The network access server is used in this system. The client wants to access the internet using wi fi connection. The client will open his browser. The person is not authorized to access the internet. Then the network access server will ask the client to supply his username and password. The client sends this info to network access server.

It uses radius protocol to connect to AAA server. The user name and the password is given the radius server. The radius server determines the validity of the credentials. The radius server notifies the network access server that the credentials of the client are validated. The network access server will grant the access to internet to the client.

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