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Microsoft IAG

It has been a while since my last post, but time is short these days.

Today I had to troubleshoot a Microsoft IAG appliance. Microsoft IAG stands for Microsoft Intelligent Application Gateway. And indeed, intelligent it is. NOT. I have seen and configured multiple SSL VPN solutions like Juniper SA, Citrix Access Gateway, Citrix Secure Gateway and Cisco WebVPN. But to be honest, Microsoft IAG is the worst of all.

Microsoft IAG is installed on an appliance and is closely related to Microsoft ISA 2006, which is also installed on the server. Whenever you make some configuration changes to IAG, you have to active the new configuration inside IAG. After activating the configuration, I looked at the new ISA firewall policies and I really couldn’t believe my eyes. IAG configured ISA automatically, when activating the configuration.

A simple portal, where 2 websites and OWA are published and a network connect (SSL IP VPN), results in approximately 10 firewall policy rules in ISA. Okay, I could live with that, but I shivered while taking a closer look at the rules. It is not easy to discover what purpose a specific rule has, without looking to the different tabs while editing the rule.

Besides the crazy management of the appliance, me and a colleague had a lot of problems when testing the appliance. Currently the network connector is not supported on Windows Vista and you receive a lot of (useless) errors when using Internet Explorer 8. The logging functionality is also very basic and hard to find. I had problems with configuring and testing the network connector with the non-split tunneling and disable local area network access option, I couldn’t find any useful logging about the problem. For some reason only specific traffic is routed into the VPN tunnel. I ended up configuring split-tunneling and only route specific network segments into the SSL VPN tunnel.

My opinion till now, Microsoft IAG cannot be compared with other SSL VPN appliances I have seen. I guess Microsoft IAG could test positive when using the appliance in a solely Windows environment, where only Windows services, like OWA and SharePoint, are published to the internet.

Maybe the solution is a lot cheaper compared with the Juniper and Citrix solution, but for know I would rather buy a Cisco ASA 5505 or Cisco ASA 5510. I would definitely not configure the Microsoft IAG as a cooperate firewall terminating the Internet connection.

Where is the Internet Authentication Service?

Microsoft IAS server is often used as RADIUS server to authenticate VPN users or in conjunction with ISA reverse proxy to authenticate OWA users or PDA synchronization.

Today I had to install an ISA reverse proxy server with ISA 2006 Standard and Exchange 2007. I wanted to install Microsoft IAS as RADIUS server to authenticate the OWA users. Normally I install IAS on one, but preferably, on two domain controllers. I logged in on a domain controller through RDP. I noticed that the OS of the domain controller was Windows Server 2008.

Cool, finally working with a Windows Server 2008. After getting familiarized with the new view and layout, I started to search for a way to add the needed Windows component IAS. After searching for a while I found how to add Windows component. Looking at the complete list, I couldn’t find the Internet Authentication Service.

Oops, did Microsoft remove the IAS functionality from its server platform??? After googling for a second, I found that IAS has been replaced by Network Policy and Access Server service in Windows 2008.

Microsoft TechNet told me the following:

Network Policy Server (NPS) is the Microsoft implementation of a Remote Authentication Dial-in User Service (RADIUS) server and proxy in Windows Server 2008. NPS is the replacement for Internet Authentication Service (IAS) in Windows Server 2003.

 

As a RADIUS server, NPS performs centralized connection authentication, authorization, and accounting for many types of network access, including wireless and virtual private network (VPN) connections. As a RADIUS proxy, NPS forwards authentication and accounting messages to other RADIUS servers. NPS also acts as a health evaluation server for Network Access Protection (NAP). Source

After installing NPS, I started the configuration. You really have to get familiar with the way Windows Server 2008 works. There are a lot of different wizard and multiple configuration options to choose from. Everything looks a bit more fancy. NPS is not only a replacement for IAS, but has also many enhancements.

More information about installing and configuration Network Policy Server can be found in the article Understanding the new Windows Server 2008 Network Policy Server on WindowsNetworking.com. Here you can read that NPS has a lot of functions related to Network Access Protocol (NAP). A very detailed example of using NPS to perform NAP can be found in Brian Posey’s series An Introduction to Network Access Protoction.