Nortel Networks this week divulged its product road map to let network administrators define, distribute and enforce policies for granting network service levels to users.
The company unveiled Optivity Policy Services, three policy management applications designed to enable users to establish guidelines for traffic priority, switch security and guaranteeing service levels in enterprise networks. Optivity Policy Services is the result of a strategy outlined by Nortel last summer.
Optivity Policy Services 1.0 enables users to prioritize applications. It runs on Unix and Windows NT systems, and combines IP address management capabilities with a Java-based policy configuration interface and a policy server.
From a template in the Java interface, a network administrator can define network bandwidth priority policies by marking the Type of Service field in the IP headers of applications. These policies then stored in a directory database and downloaded onto network devices via the Common Open Policy Service (COPS) protocol.
COPS is supported on Nortel routers running BayRS 13.20. Optivity Policy Services can also download policies into Cisco IOS 11.0 devices by emulating the IOS Command Line Interface, Nortel officials say. Later this year, Nortel will add its Accelar and Passport switches to the COPS mix.
Optivity Policy Services 2.0 adds switch security to the policy management portfolio. The software allows users to establish network access policies based on user authentication information.
When a user boots up his or her PC, Optivity Policy Services 2.0 initiates an Extensible Authentication Protocol session with a Nortel switch. The switch then passes the authentication request to a policy server along with the switch ID, and the port and MAC address of the user.
The policy server then interacts with an authentication server to process the authentication request, and grant network access, QoS configuration and VLAN membership to the user.
Optivity Policy Services 3.0 adds policy-based service management. It works with several other Optivity applications - such as Service Management, Reporting and the base discovery, event and topology service package - to allow users to define and enforce service level policies in converged voice and data networks.
All three applications cost $25,000 apiece. Version 1.0 will be available in July; Version 2.0 in the fourth quarter and Version 3.0 in the third quarter 2000.
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