Net giants enter VPN fray

By Tim Greene
Network World Fusion, 5/4/98

Las Vegas - Virtual private network (VPN) products will take center stage at Networld+Interop 98 this week as major players and start-ups alike will spotlight their latest wares for securely accessing corporate networks over the Internet.

Industry giants Bay Networks, Inc., Ascend Communications, Inc. and IBM, as well as newcomers Indus River Networks, Inc. and Assured Digital, Inc. hope to steal the show with new VPN offerings.

VPNs are an increasingly popular option for linking employees or business partners over the Internet. Ideally, a VPN provides security and management attributes that promise a less expensive way of linking remote users to corporate net resources than traditional private dial-in lines.

According to industry ex-perts, what most vendors call a VPN consists of encrypted TCP/IP links between LANs with some sort of firewall included. There are variations on that theme, many of which will be on display at N+I.

Bay Networks will announce a scaled down version of the vendor's VPN gear to let small enterprises and branch offices communicate with remote users or trading partners over the Internet.

The Bay ES 1000 can support up to 50 simultaneous users dialing in to the corporate network via the Internet. The ES 1000 encrypts and decrypts traffic as it passes through the device's single T-1 link to the Internet. Larger boxes in the Bay VPN family support T-3 connections as well as T-1s.

In addition, the ES 1000 sports new operating software that adds L2TP, which is encryption for setting up secure IP connections called tunnels across the Internet.

ES 1000 also comes with software that can encapsulate Novell Network, Inc.'s IPX traffic in IP packets for transport across the Internet. The software also supports using Novell's Netware Directory Services to assign access rights to remote users, making it simpler to administer the VPN. The new box costs $7,000.

While Bay offers a single-box designed specifically to enable VPNs, Ascend plans to roll out a VPN scheme that lashes together multiple existing products.

The company's MultiVPN package defines how corporate users and ISPs can set up VPNs using Ascend dialup routers, access switches and core switches. Ascend's MultiVPN package will support remote access over the Internet and provide a way to guarantee IP service quality across service provider networks.

As part of MultiVPN, Ascend will also announce IP Navigator VPN Routing, which lets service providers guarantee customer IP service levels. The company will also announce support for multiprotocol label switching, which will let users belong to multiple VPNs.

Also at Interop

Sources said IBM's Networking Software Division will be announcing a slew of VPN and related IP security products across the company's server and router lines. One of the keys to this will be the addition of IP Security (IPSec) for encryption and key management. IBM declined to comment on the announcement.

Assured Digital will present for the first time its ADI VPN product family, which includes client software, management software and IP edge switches for sending encrypted data across the Internet. ADI gear also authenticates users trying to gain access to central sites. ADI's Automated Operation and Security (AOS) system in each device supports IPSec, ISAKMP/Oakley encryption-key management, and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) encryption.

Indus River is promising to deliver IPSec packet-level au-thentication and encryption to users in its RiverWorks VPN gear within 90 days. Unique to RiverWorks is a client database of local phone rates used to find the least expensive way to connect to the Internet. RiverWorks also stores profiles of user groups for assigning access rights.

Staff writer Marc Songini contributed to this story.