Net/Systems Management /

GTE VPN Advantage progresses state of VPN management services

By John Morency
Network World on Network/Systems Management, 12/23/98

In previous columns I've flagged the state of effective service level management for Virtual Private Networks as one of the key inhibitors to broader VPN growth. This concern mainly relates to managed VPN services vs. enterprise support staffs largely using the Internet as little more than a VPN connectivity pipe. At issue is service level support for both remote access as well as site-to-site VPN services, including managed service levels for VPN availability and/or performance along with optionally managed security services that include digital certificate support. Over the course of this past year, it's clear that the more progressive service providers have both seen and proactively acted upon this requirement to varying degrees. Increasing service choice and maturity without question will certainly constitute key catalysts for rapid growth of the public VPN market over the next two years.

The latest example of VPN service evolution comes from GTE Internetworking which recently announced a service called VPN Advantage, a managed VPN service that is one of the first to combine service level agreement with support for X.509 Digital Certificates as part of a managed security service. Currently, the service offers remote access, site-to-site and extranet VPN connectivity, as well as a way to bring VPN traffic in from sites and users not on GTE's network.

Some key features of VPN Advantage are its Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for both dedicated and dial access services. In the site-to-site scenario, GTE Internetworking, like many other service providers, offers SLAs on availability and latency. In GTE's case, the SLAs have 99.9% availability and round-trip latency of 125 msec or less.

A key difference, however, is that the SLAs extend into the customer premises including the local loop, customer premises equipment (CPE) (typically a router) and tunnel terminators, which are bundled with the service. In its latency SLA, roundtrip delay is measured from GTE's operation center to the tunnel terminator installed at individual user sites. And the availability SLA applies to both the GTE backbone as well as all to the CPE and tunnel terminator.

The latter option is particularly attractive to network managers who are struggling to implement effective service level management across their enterprise networks. Going beyond the service provider backbone and supporting all the elements involved in the delivery of the service is the right step to take in reducing the amount of additional management that needs to be performed by the user.

On the dial access side, VPN Advantage SLAs address IT managers' concerns about their users getting through. GTE Internetworking is guaranteeing 97% busy-free dialing, so the user is pretty much assured of making a connection on the first try. The SLA also covers the performance of the dial-up connection guaranteeing that 97% of the time users will connect at 26.4K bit/sec or higher.

In my opinion, GTE deserves due recognition for being one of the first VPN providers to address performance, availability and security management services in one announcement along with the service level management guarantees to back them up. GTE was one of the first service providers to offer service level support for Internet access and it's certainly encouraging to see that this provider has not chosen to rest on its laurels.