Network Policy Server

Network Policy Server (NPS) allows you to create and enforce organization-wide network access policies for client health, connection request authentication, and connection request authorization. In addition, you can use NPS as a Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) proxy to forward connection requests to a server running NPS or other RADIUS servers that you configure in remote RADIUS server groups.

NPS allows you to centrally configure and manage network access authentication, authorization, and client health policies with the following three features:

• RADIUS server. NPS performs centralized authentication, authorization, and accounting for wireless, authenticating switch, remote access dial-up and virtual private network (VPN) connections. When you use NPS as a RADIUS server, you configure network access servers, such as wireless access points and VPN servers, as RADIUS clients in NPS. You also configure network policies that NPS uses to authorize connection requests, and you can configure RADIUS accounting so that NPS logs accounting information to log files on the local hard disk or in a Microsoft SQL Server database. For more information, see RADIUS Server.
  
  
• RADIUS proxy. When you use NPS as a RADIUS proxy, you configure connection request policies that tell the NPS server which connection requests to forward to other RADIUS servers and to which RADIUS servers you want to forward connection requests. You can also configure NPS to forward accounting data to be logged by one or more computers in a remote RADIUS server group. For more information, see RADIUS Proxy.
  
  
• Network Access Protection (NAP) policy server. When you configure NPS as a NAP policy server, NPS evaluates statements of health (SoH) sent by NAP-capable client computers that want to connect to the network. NPS also acts as a RADIUS server when configured with NAP, performing authentication and authorization for connection requests. You can configure NAP policies and settings in NPS, including system health validators (SHVs), health policy, and remediation server groups that allow client computers to update their configuration to become compliant with your organization's network policy. For more information, see Network Access Protection in NPS.
  
  

You can configure NPS with any combination of the preceding features. For example, you can configure one NPS server to act as a NAP policy server using one or more enforcement methods, while also configuring the same NPS server as a RADIUS server for dial-up connections and as a RADIUS proxy to forward some connection requests to members of a remote RADIUS server group for authentication and authorization in another domain.