Share Via
When it comes to securing access to your wired and wireless network, 802.1X with EAP-TLS has long been considered the gold standard for authenticating corporate-owned and BYOD user devices. It provides strong, certificate-based mutual authentication between the endpoint and the network, ensuring that only trusted devices gain access.
But here’s the thing — 802.1X only solves one piece of the broader network access challenge. Most environments also need to onboard and control authorization privileges for IoT, BMS, and Guests devices. In a traditional RADIUS-based setup, these use cases pile on complexity that usually leads to adding on NAC solutions — especially when you have to ensure that any wired device receives proper authentication regardless of the wired port it may be plugged into.
A Look at Traditional 802.1X + NAC Complexity
In a network environment with legacy NAC, deploying 802.1X with EAP-TLS often becomes a multi-month project due to the many layers needed to be touched in order to ensure a device connected in one building or location is handled in the same manner:
Identity & Certificates
- The need to stand up and maintain a Certificate Authority (CA)
- Issue and manage client certificates
- Configure supplicants on every endpoint type
Roll-out Authentication Infrastructure
- Deploy, cluster, and maintain RADIUS servers
- Integrate with your identity provider (Azure AD, AD, Okta, etc.)
- Create and maintain authentication and authorization policies
Ensure Network Infrastructure Is Ready
- Configure 802.1X on every switch port and SSID
- Map VLANs and ACLs based on RADIUS policy decisions
- Test special cases for guests, printers, or other IoT
Operations & Lifecycle
- Monitor and troubleshoot authentication failures across multiple systems
- Apply software patches, firmware updates, and scaling changes
- Go back and update policies as devices and requirements evolve
Because RADIUS in this model is tied to traditional NAC appliances, they often end up being used to solve every single use case — from corporate user authentication, to IoT policy handling, and guest onboarding. This amounts to a lot of complexity as everything sits on one solution and interface that many in IT find cumbersome to operate.
How Nile Simplifies the Equation
Nile has taken a different approach when it comes to access control and campus Zero Trust enforcement. Most of the hard parts tied to NAC — creating identity-based rules, IoT onboarding, managing segmentation at scale, and ensuring policy enforcement actually works — are already built into the Nile Access Service. We’ve even added Guest Access onboarding. These capabilities operate without VLANs, dynamic ACLs, or extra appliances, drastically reducing both design and operational overhead.
That leaves 802.1X with EAP-TLS as the last big piece for organizations to tackle. Any organization that wants certificate-based authentication for corporate and BYOD devices now has a very simple alternative that changes the game. This is where the new Nile RADIUS Service comes in.
Introducing the New Nile RADIUS Service
With Nile, you get a very scalable authentication service that’s easy to set up, and operate, without added-on appliances. You still own certificate provisioning, supplicant configuration, and CA operations as those remain important, organization-specific steps. But we take on the rest:
- No RADIUS appliances to deploy or maintain — it’s part of the Nile platform, delivered as a service.
- No per-network-element 802.1X configuration — every port and SSID is capable and ready on day one.
- Tightly integrated with Nile policy enforcement — host-based isolation and Zero Trust controls without VLAN gymnastics.
- Direct connections to your MDM — i.e., Intune.
- Full SLA-backed uptime, scaling, and monitoring — Nile operates it end-to-end.
By embedding RADIUS directly into the Nile Access Service, we remove the infrastructure, scaling, and network-configuration burden that makes traditional deployments slow, expensive, and fragile once a policy or rule needs to be altered.
Retiring that Old NAC/RADIUS Stack
For many customers, this means they can finally retire the expensive, complex NAC appliances that have been causing IoT and guest access headaches. Customers using Nile have access to built-in capabilities on day one. Network segmentation? Done at the host level, not via VLAN sprawl. Now, with the Nile RADIUS Service, 802.1X and EAP-TLS support is a breeze.
Choice Without Compromise
Some organizations are choosing SSO-based onboarding with unique pre-shared keys (uPSK) for certain user or device groups. This can be a viable alternative to 802.1X considering it eliminates the need for Cert/Client management and other security concerns which can be offset through the embedded host based isolation within the Nile architecture. But, for many EAP-TLS remains the gold standard for user device authentication.The key is that Nile supports your needs, so you’re choosing the best fit for each use case without being locked into one method or one tool.
The Bottom Line
802.1X with EAP-TLS is powerful, but it’s just one part of Nile’s complete access control and campus Zero Trust strategy. In traditional environments, deploying it often means standing up and managing an entire RADIUS/NAC stack that’s also tasked with solving every other access challenge — from IoT to guest access.
Nile flips that model on its head. Our Nile Access Service already addresses the majority of those use cases without the added complexity. With the new Nile RADIUS Service, we’ve just closed the loop on 802.1X — giving you the gold standard for device authentication while removing the heavy infrastructure and operational lift.
The result is a simpler, more sustainable way to secure your network — one that finally lets you move past the old, broken, complex NAC/RADIUS stack for good.
If you need secure wired and wireless access visit our website to learn more about the Nile Access Service
