Managing authentication to networks, systems and applications is an onerous task because of diverse user bases and access methods. In this Clear Choice Test, an identity-management appliance called Identity Engines' Ignition Server proved to be adept at aggregating control of multiple user repositories and devices once we got used to the somewhat cumbersome interface.

The Ignition appliance goes beyond standard authentication, authorization and auditing to include centralized policy management, user consolidation, compliance automation and distributed deployment. Ignition uses RADIUS, 802.1x and other standard protocols.

We installed the appliance in our test network using the configuration that routes all traffic through the administration interface (See "How we did it," below) There also is the option of splitting management traffic and authentication/authorization traffic to a separate network interface. Initial setup of the appliance took less than 10 minutes.

Management is accomplished through the product's Ignition Dashboard, a thick-client console that we installed on a separate server. With the increasing movement toward Web-based management consoles, we were a little surprised to see the thick-client approach. We would prefer a Web-based management console to make distributed management a bit easier.

After logon, the Ignition appliance is selected and configured. We would like a more centralized approach to management in which we can make configuration changes and then choose which appliances to apply them to. This prevents the need to make changes multiple times to different devices in a distributed environment.