Netopia, MegaPath to improve management

Look for new joint options from Netopia and MegaPath next year as they expand their relationship to include development of customer-site gear for their managed VPN services.

Netopia says it will tweak many of its products in response to the needs of customers who have bought these managed services.

Some of the improvements are focused on management. For instance, Netopia says it will incorporate remote management software into some of its gear to enable both customers and service provider MegaPath to manage multiple devices centrally. This new capability will use technology Netopia bought when it acquired JadeSail Systems in October.

Netopia also plans to add memory to some of its high-end WAN access gear so it can support SSL for network administrators to tap into the boxes remotely but securely. The extra memory will also support XML and enable the SNMP management information bases to gather more data.

Because many customers are using IPSec VPNs as a replacement for frame relay links, they want to make sure sites have some connectivity even if the Internet connection fails. So Netopia will add dial back-up ports to some of its low-end routers that support small branch offices.

Also for small offices, Netopia introduced Wi-Fi support on ADSL routers, so branch-office gear can connect to a VPN wirelessly, reducing the need for wiring small offices.

The two companies say they are beefing up their joint sales agreements as well.

MegaPath bought TManage earlier this year, which specializes in managed VPN services. TManage has announced a Secure Sockets Layer remote access managed service, making this merged entity something to consider for outsourcing Internet networking.