# Network access control: what AI models recommend, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition. Asked as "network access control solution" and as "NAC system", six framings each, to fourteen models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Added to the October 2026 Edition on October 4, 2026; its answers are read by the distilled judge (ai-indexes-judge-qwen3-14b-run3), not the claude-opus-5 judge of the earlier categories. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/network/network-access-control/

**Standing:** Portnox Cloud leads with 35% of first choices; verdict contested. 55 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Portnox Cloud | 35% | 7% | 45 |
| 2 | PacketFence | 15% | 0% | 10 |
| 3 | OPSWAT MetaAccess | 7% | 0% | 12 |
| 4 | Aruba ClearPass | 2% | 43% | 21 |
| 5 | Cisco ISE | 2% | 51% | 35 |
| 6 | Fortinet FortiNAC | 0% | 15% | 27 |
| 7 | Cisco Identity Services Engine | 0% | 13% | 15 |
| 8 | HPE Aruba ClearPass | 0% | 0% | 12 |
| 9 | Forescout | 0% | 30% | 23 |
| 10 | FortiNAC | 0% | 18% | 11 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: Cloudflare One, Jamf Zero Trust; alternatives Fortinet FortiGate, Microsoft Entra ID
- GPT-5.4 mini: Aruba ClearPass; alternatives Cisco Identity Services Engine, FortiNAC, Portnox Cloud
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Portnox Cloud; alternatives Fortinet FortiNAC, HPE Aruba ClearPass, macmon NAC
- Perplexity Sonar: Portnox Cloud; alternatives Forescout, Fortinet FortiNAC, HPE Aruba ClearPass
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Portnox CLEAR; alternatives OPSWAT MetaAccess
- Mistral Small: Portnox CLEAR; alternatives Cisco ISE, Fortinet FortiNAC
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Portnox CLEAR, Portnox Cloud; alternatives Aruba ClearPass, Fortinet FortiNAC
- Llama 4 Maverick: OPSWAT MetaAccess; alternatives Portnox Cloud
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Portnox CLEAR; alternatives Cisco Identity Services Engine, HPE Aruba ClearPass
- Kimi K2: Portnox CLEAR; alternatives FortiNAC
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Portnox Cloud; alternatives HPE Aruba ClearPass, Ivanti Policy Secure
- MiniMax M2.5: Portnox Cloud; alternatives HPE Aruba ClearPass, Ivanti Policy Secure, OPSWAT MetaAccess
- GPT-6 Luna: Portnox Cloud; alternatives Cisco ISE, FortiNAC, HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass
- Muse Glimmer 30B: OPSWAT MetaAccess / MetaDefender NAC, Portnox CLEAR

## Sources the answers cite

71 of 84 answers came back with a source list, from 14 of 14 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- portnox.com: 46 answers, 92 citations
- cyberpress.org: 38 answers, 38 citations
- us.fitgap.com: 31 answers, 37 citations
- cybersecuritynews.com: 30 answers, 31 citations
- gartner.com: 28 answers, 42 citations
- cloudnuro.ai: 26 answers, 26 citations
- comparitech.com: 24 answers, 24 citations
- g2.com: 22 answers, 31 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://cyberpress.org/nac-solutions-by-business-size (38 answers)
- https://cybersecuritynews.com/best-nac-solutions (30 answers)
- https://cloudnuro.ai/blog/top-10-network-access-control-nac-solutions-for-zero-trust-implementation (26 answers)
- https://gartner.com/reviews/market/network-access-control (25 answers)
- https://comparitech.com/net-admin/network-access-control-software (24 answers)
- https://portnox.com/cybersecurity-101/access-control/top-nac-solutions (24 answers)
- https://omr.com/en/reviews/category/network-access-control-nac (22 answers)
- https://thectoclub.com/tools/best-network-access-control-software (20 answers)
- https://virima.com/blog/best-network-access-control-solutions (20 answers)
- https://us.fitgap.com/search/network-access-control-software (19 answers)

## Warned against

- Cisco ISE: 18 of 35 labels negative. "Avoid Cisco ISE unless you're already deeply committed to Cisco and have the operational maturity to manage its complexity." (Kimi K2, paraphrase prompt)
- Aruba ClearPass: 9 of 21 labels negative. "What to Avoid - Cisco ISE and Aruba ClearPass – While excellent solutions, they are typically expensive and complex" (Kimi K2, budget prompt)
- Fortinet FortiNAC: 4 of 27 labels negative. "Avoid Fortinet FortiNAC (poor usability, difficult to stand up)." (GLM 4.7 FlashX, negative prompt)
- Forescout: 7 of 23 labels negative. "Be especially cautious if you have older network infrastructure... The risk of network disruption is higher than with other NACs." (DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.