Nortel set to roll out SSL VPN gear

Company also has Web acceleration, LAN and data center offerings on tap.

By Phil Hochmuth, Network World
February 10, 2003 12:10 AM ET

. What's this?

SANTA CLARA - New hardware coming soon from Nortel aims to give users a more cost-effective method for remote access, as the network vendor looks to firm up its position in the emerging Secure Sockets Layer VPN market.

Nortel's Alteon Application Switch SSL and SSL acceleration card for its PassPort 8600 routing switch are designed to speed encrypted transactions between Web clients and servers over SSL links. The company also announced a switch for midsize enterprise backbones, wiring closets and users of Layer 4-7 switching.

The Application Switch 2424-SSL is a new version of Nortel's Layer 4-7 switch with SSL encryption added to each port. The box has 24 10/100M bit/sec ports that can be used to process secure SSL Web traffic, such as e-commerce transactions. It also can terminate SSL VPN links with users of SSL-enabled Web browsers, letting clients securely access applications such as e-mail, file sharing, and other Web- and Java-based applications.

"More and more remote access will be done via SSL" in the near future, says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at The Yankee Group.

Related Content

SSL VPNs can give remote users access to Web-enabled applications while encrypting all traffic between the browser and server. The technology differs from VPNs based on IP Security (IPSec), which require client software to establish a secure tunnel between a remote user and the network.

SSL VPNs could be less expensive to operate, Kerravala says, because they do not require client software that needs to be updated, managed and configured.

"An SSL VPN costs about half as much to manage as [IPSec] and about a quarter the cost of a dial-up remote-access solution," Kerravala says. "It's good that Nortel is getting in the [SSL VPN] game early; they're the only one of the big players that has an SSL VPN offering. The rest are mostly start-ups."

Other companies offering SSL VPN products include Aspelle, Aventail, Check Point, Neoteris, Netilla and SafeWeb. Industry watchers such as Kerravala say Cisco will have SSL VPNs on its menu by year-end, probably through acquisition of a smaller player.

Also on the SSL front, Nortel introduced the Alteon 8661-SSL Acceleration Module for its PassPort 8600 switch. A single blade lets a PassPort process up to 3,000 SSL transactions per second. Up to four blades can be fitted into a PassPort for a total of 12,000 SSL transactions per second.

Nortel also released a non-SSL version of the Alteon 2424. The 24-port 10/100M bit/sec switch can process traffic based on Layer 4 information, such as application port identities, or Layer 7 application layer data, such as HTTP addresses or cookies.

The new box adds 15 ports over the previous Alteon Application Switch, and can maintain up to 2 million concurrent Layer 4-7 traffic flows - four times the capacity of the previous product, Nortel says.

In addition to the SSL and Web switching gear, Nortel announced LAN and data center gear with the introduction of a fixed-configuration version of its core switch with the PassPort 1600. The Layer 3 box comes in three versions - 12, 24 and 48 10/100M bit/sec ports - and is aimed at midsize companies that want Layer 3 core switching without a chassis product.