AEP Networks Netilla Security Platform

Data sheet for AEP Networks'Netilla Security Platform Starting price: $4,500  Overall score: 3.3

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For a small company, AEP Networks has a powerful weapon: the thin-client mechanism that ships with its Netilla Security Platform (NSP), a product based on technologies that came with the merger of AEP Systems and Netilla Networks in 2004.

While most competing SSL VPNs struggle to do a good job at handling both Citrix-based and Microsoft-based Windows Terminal Services, AEP's efforts have focused on serving up these applications to all types of remote end users.

Want X Windows? Or a 3270 emulator? Or Telnet and SSH? As an alternative to running a full SSL client, AEP's thin-client approach avoids the inefficiency of tunneling TCP-in-TCP typically used in full network extension products. As a bonus, the end user does not need to have administrator rights, a plus in very diverse extranet deployments. This feature allowed NSP to excel in the port-forwarding interoperability testing we conducted. (See interoperability test results.)

The NSP is not for those who want fine-grained access control (see test results on access control), need to support large numbers of users or require a high degree of customization or end-point security (see test results on end-point security), as the capabilities of the product are fairly limited in each of those areas.

NSP is ideally suited for businesses looking to transition from full-screen or terminal emulation applications to a Web-based environment. By emphasizing applications that AEP can serve with its thin client secret sauce, this product has a clear focus.

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