AT&T's VPN makes remote access reality
By Laura Kujubu
InfoWorld Electric
Telecommunications carriers are rushing to provide new services that solve one of
IT managers' biggest problems -- remote access. The latest offering is from AT&T,
which announced AT&T WorldNet Virtual Private Network (VPN) Service at
Comdex in Las Vegas. (See "AT&T WorldNet plans VPN service, 56Kbps modem
access," Nov. 10.)
Denise Grey, marketing director of VPN solutions at AT&T, and Tri Nguyen,
technology consultant at AT&T, spoke with InfoWorld reporter Laura Kujubu about
the VPN service and the enhancements that are being planned for the future.
InfoWorld: What are some of the problems that remote users face, and how does
AT&T's VPN service help solve those problems?
Nguyen: WorldNet Virtual Private Network Services is designed to enable large
corporate customers to outsource dial access or remote access. Because the biggest
problem for corporate customers is the cost of maintaining their remote-access
infrastructure, by outsourcing this to AT&T, they reduce costs and get ubiquity and
better service levels across our virtual private network.
Grey: A big need that we see from our customer base is business-quality dial-up
service. Using the Internet, business users can sit there during peak hours and not
get a response. The other thing customers have said to us is that they need
business-quality, end-user support. So your end-user can call in to the service, and
we'll guarantee that within 2 minutes that phone call is answered.
InfoWorld: How is VPN service better than other types of remote-access solution?
Grey: When you compare [VPNs] to Internet-based services, again, you're just not
getting business quality [over the Internet]. For example, on the Internet, you dial
into your ISP's network, and the Web site you might be trying to get to could be
three or four hops of a network away from you, so you've got to traverse all of those
networks. And nothing is guaranteed; the bandwidth is not guaranteed. With this
VPN service, you're dialing into AT&T's network, you're going across AT&T's
network, and you never jump onto someone else's network. Our SLA [service-level
agreement] can guarantee end-to-end, 99.7 percent availability.
And our SLA includes the customer's local loop. So for a LAN site, basically, the
SLA includes the router, across the private line, across our IP backbone,
and into another LAN site. You're going LAN to LAN, and all of these components
are included in that 99.7 percent uptime figure for the SLA. No one else in the
industry does that. |
