3Com Arrives At VPN Party
CommunicationsWeek
Monday, May 5, 1997
--
The networking giant makes up for lost time with its tunnel-monitoring
technology
Amy Rogers
VPN is poised to be the talk of the show at NetWorld+Interop in Las
Vegas this week, where johnny-come-lately 3Com Corp. will be getting in
on the act.
3Com plans to build Virtual Private Networking support in-to some of
its AccessBuilder, NetBuilder and OfficeConnect units, as well as
products it expects to acquire in its pending acquisition of U.S.
Robotics, 3Com officials told CommunicationsWeek last week.
With VPN, a secure connection between a remote user and a corporate
network is created on the fly over the Internet, using the
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). User authentication and access checks can
be implemented at a carrier's point-of-presence (POP), at the point
where the Internet and the private network meets, and at other stops
in-between.
This approach is typically less costly than equipping each remote user
with dial-in software to get into remote-access servers at the corporate
site. With VPN, users tap an access concentrator at the carrier's
point-of-presence through their browsers, eliminating the need for
remote access servers at the corporate site. Better still, management of
the linkup is handled by the network service provider (NSP).
Late to join the VPN party, 3Com, Santa Clara, Calif., is hoping to
offer some features to make its Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) strategy stand out from the crowd.
A tunnel-monitoring technology-which will report statistics on virtual tunnel usage and availability-will be a key part of 3Com's 3Access VPN architecture, said Joe Diodati, director of marketing in the company's enterprise access division.
Another feature will let geographically dispersed workers come
together in a virtual workgroup, Diodati said. 3Com won't be the first
to offer this, however; FTP Software's Virtual IP Network, announced
last fall, also will let users create temporary virtual workgroups. The client portion of the software is already shipping from the North
Andover, Mass., developer, which says it will ship the entire system by midyear. 3Com's VPN capabilities won't begin appearing in products until the end of this year.
Diodati said that network managers want to manage remote access
centrally and provide access locally. "VPNs will be one of the most
synergistic points of the 3Com/U.S. Robotics merger," he added, though
he declined comment on which USR products would get the VPN features.
Competing VPN vendors, meanwhile, were unimpressed by 3Com's plans to
further crowd the space.
"A lot of the major players who have been caught flat-footed are
announcing slideware and marketecture now," said Rick Kagan, vice
president of marketing at VPNet Technologies Inc., San Jose, Calif.
VPNet shipped its VSU-1000-a unit for encrypting and compressing data
traveling to and from remote sites-in December.
Another vendor specializing in VPN technology, Aventail Corp.,
Seattle, began shipping its PartnerVPN last week.
Despite the longer lead time, industry analysts said 3Com is on the
right track. "One of the big complaints about remote access is that IT
loses control quickly," said Virginia Brooks, an analyst with Boston's
Aberdeen Group.
3Com's centralized VPN management focus, she noted, "could make
network managers feel more in control."
VPN "is something we would consider," agreed Mike Phillips, team
leader for corporate MIS at medical equipment manufacturer Varian, Palo Alto, Calif. "We have a capital investment in multiple remote-access servers around the world, but it is becoming a drain on resources to administer 3,000 remote users."
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