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Concurrent authz sessions on a switchport

mamckenn
Level 1
Level 1

I'm really trying to find numbers on this. I have a scenario where many users will be going through a single access port, and i need to understand the limitations wrt concurrent authz sessions on a port, for mab and 802.1x.

Can someone point me to the numbers for the 9300X and 9400X please?

thanks!

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thomas
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

The bare minimum is a simple RADIUS Access-Accept which allows the endpoint on to the default assigned VLAN with no other security features. This is the most scalable and is how you would achieve the 2000 maximum sessions in the doc referred by @balaji.bandi

However, On or Off the network is pretty rudimentary these days. The reality is you probably have a variety of endpoints or scenarios you will inevitably want to handle. The reality is it depends on your actual authorization implementation on your switchport and you haven't told us how you want to enforce the authorizations on a port. ISE can do any enforcement options available via RADIUS which is typically VLAN, [d]ACLs, and security groups (SGTs).

You typically only get one Data VLAN and one Voice VLAN.  If you want to cram 3 or more devices into a 3 or more VLANs per switchport, that is not going to work and they are going to share the Data VLAN. Is that OK for you? Yes, you can dynamically change the VLAN since it is 802.1X but then it's a last-one-wins scenario for all of the endpoints on the port and you might have L3 IP DHCP refresh problems if you change VLANs on endpoints.

Are you planning to do L3/L4 ACLs on a switchport? OK. Your limit then becomes the number of ACL ACEs (access control entries aka lines) per switchport. 

"How many ACEs are there per switchport?!" : It varies per access switch platform but is typically 32-64 ACEs per ASIC.

"How do I confirm the exact number for the 9300/9400?!" : Ask the switching teams... I am not aware of an simple, convenient reference table.

So with L3/L4 ACLs, your max sessions calculation is below since you have not stated your ACL size or number of endpoints per port.

max_sessions = max_aces_per_switchport / (aces_per_endpoint * endpoints_per_port)

Finally there are security group tags (SGTs). There are SGT enforcement limits documented in Segmentation Strategy :

 

 

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balaji.bandi
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check here : (this may be changed on newer version - so check what version of code running on your switches)

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst9300/software/release/16-6/configuration_guide/sec/b_166_sec_9300_cg/configuring_ieee_802_1x_port_based_authentication.html

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Thanks Balaji, but that document refers to 2k maximum sessions, surely this is not per port but per switch? I need to know what the maximum concurrent sessions are for a single port.

show sdm prefer access maybe?  

Also check the datasheets:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-9300-series-switches/nb-06-cat9300-ser-data-sheet-cte-en.html

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-9400-series-switches/nb-06-cat9400-ser-sup-eng-data-sheet-cte-en.html

tldr; total mac addresses per switch in 9300X: 32,000.  9400X: 64,000.  Not sure if there is a specific port limit though.  What exactly are you trying to achieve here?  If you are concerned with individual port maximum, you should deploy more managed switches and do 802.1X/MAB as close the clients as possible.

Hi, thanks for the response. This isn't for the usual campus Lan environment, so this is not the usual poor design (daisychaining) scenario. I can't really say much more than that, other than to say there in the environment we can only do what we need to do with one switchport.

thomas
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

The bare minimum is a simple RADIUS Access-Accept which allows the endpoint on to the default assigned VLAN with no other security features. This is the most scalable and is how you would achieve the 2000 maximum sessions in the doc referred by @balaji.bandi

However, On or Off the network is pretty rudimentary these days. The reality is you probably have a variety of endpoints or scenarios you will inevitably want to handle. The reality is it depends on your actual authorization implementation on your switchport and you haven't told us how you want to enforce the authorizations on a port. ISE can do any enforcement options available via RADIUS which is typically VLAN, [d]ACLs, and security groups (SGTs).

You typically only get one Data VLAN and one Voice VLAN.  If you want to cram 3 or more devices into a 3 or more VLANs per switchport, that is not going to work and they are going to share the Data VLAN. Is that OK for you? Yes, you can dynamically change the VLAN since it is 802.1X but then it's a last-one-wins scenario for all of the endpoints on the port and you might have L3 IP DHCP refresh problems if you change VLANs on endpoints.

Are you planning to do L3/L4 ACLs on a switchport? OK. Your limit then becomes the number of ACL ACEs (access control entries aka lines) per switchport. 

"How many ACEs are there per switchport?!" : It varies per access switch platform but is typically 32-64 ACEs per ASIC.

"How do I confirm the exact number for the 9300/9400?!" : Ask the switching teams... I am not aware of an simple, convenient reference table.

So with L3/L4 ACLs, your max sessions calculation is below since you have not stated your ACL size or number of endpoints per port.

max_sessions = max_aces_per_switchport / (aces_per_endpoint * endpoints_per_port)

Finally there are security group tags (SGTs). There are SGT enforcement limits documented in Segmentation Strategy :

 

 

Hi Thomas thanks for the comments, they are hugely helpful, and yes, sorry you are right i should have defined the requirement better. There will be several authz profiles, so we can't leverage vlans; we will have to use DACLS, we could possibly get away with L3, but it would be good to understand the difference L4 would make to the scalability. SGTs could be an option however.

I was really wanting to know where the limitation lies, and you have answered that question, i just need to check the ACE numbers for L3/4 DACLs and SGT's, thanks again!

believe me, I dont understand Q yet
there are many user connect to SW, are the user connect via AP ? are the user connect via hub ? 
the 802.1x is config in nearest point to User.

just assume there are many users (possibly hundreds) connecting via a hub, and it is not possible to replace that hub with a .1x enabled switch. This isn't actually what's going on, but for the purposes of this discussion it suffices as a description of the use case.

what I concern here how you connect these Users to SW, this help me to answer you.