Specification of: (a) mechanisms to allow network access decisions, made using existing standard higher layer authentication and authorization protocols, to be enforced at individual ports of a networked system; (b) encoding of those protocols over 802 LANs where no suitable encoding is yet defined. The project will not define or require systems that are enforcing network access decisions to: (c) process or interpret authentication information; (d) modify user data frames to secure conversations; (e) filter user data frames based on layer 2 or higher layer adressing or protocol information. The access control mechanism will be usable on LAN ports of all types of systems attached to a LAN, including bridges, routers, servers and other end stations.