Patent ID: 8886802

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: assigning, at a server-side network-access-control computing system, a transport-agnostic identifier to a client-side computing device, the transport-agnostic identifier being configured to uniquely identify the client-side computing device regardless of the media-transport technologies used by the client-side computing device to access a first network; associating the transport-agnostic identifier with access-control information stored at the server-side network-access-control computing system that is indicative of whether the client-side computing device is compliant with an access-control policy; identifying, at the server-side network-access-control computing system, a first attempt by the client-side computing device to access the first network, the first attempt being made via a first media-transport technology that identifies the client-side computing device with a first transport-specific identifier; receiving, at the server-side network-access-control computing system, the transport-agnostic identifier from the client-side computing device; using, at the server-side network-access-control computing system, the transport-agnostic identifier, instead of the first transport-specific identifier, to determine whether to allow the client-side computing device to access the first network, wherein: determining whether to allow the client-side computing device to access the first network comprises: using the transport-agnostic identifier to retrieve the access-control information stored at the server-side network-access-control computing system; determining, based on the access-control information, whether the client-side computing device is compliant with the access-control policy; identifying, at the server-side network-access-control computing system, a second attempt by the client-side computing device to access the first network, the second attempt being made via a second media-transport technology that identifies the client-side computing device with a second transport-specific identifier that is different than the first transport-specific identifier; re-receiving, at the server-side network-access-control computing system, the transport-agnostic identifier from the client-side computing device; using, at the server-side network-access-control computing system, the transport-agnostic identifier, instead of the second transport-specific identifier, to determine whether to allow the client-side computing device to access the first network.