March 03, 1997, TechWire
Novell Looking To Fill Gap Between LANs and Net
By Barbara Darrow & Michael Kanellos
OREM, Utah -- Novell, looking to win a foothold in the next Internet
frontier, this month will unveil a set of services to fill the gap between
LANs and the Internet.These "Border Services" will include proxy,
caching, firewall and virtual private network (VPN) services aimed at
boosting LAN-Internet throughput, cutting security costs and extending
the reach of existing network management utilities beyond the LAN to
web browsers and servers, Novell sources said.
As such, the technology could help value-added resellers create a VPN --
a type of extranet -- from the Web itself.
Although specific packaging is not final, Novell President Joe Marengi
said the company will announce the services before Brainshare, Novell's
annual technology show in late March. Marengi said the product will ship
this summer.
Other Novell sources said the services will be integrated into Novell's
IntranetWare file services.
"Think of where the intranet ends and the Internet picks up. That area is
what we call a border. We will enhance these services at the border to
allow businesses to communicate with other businesses with enhanced
features, such as encryption," Marengi said. The services will support
Netscape's Secure Sockets Layer protocol, he said.
The services will use Novell Directory Services to prevent potential
security holes.
Novell Directory Services "is the glue. You can look at this as a
gatekeeper, but its potential is much richer, more than control," one
Novell executive said. "It's fast access, better ways to set and keep
access control lists and with [Novell Directory Services] going
cross-platform, it's pervasive."
The services, in the form of software sitting on a "gateway" server
between the LAN and the outside world, will monitor and control both
inbound and outbound traffic and it will send private information through
the low-cost public network. VARs will be able to use the services to set
up and support communities of users in a common, secure environment,
complete with different access levels, sources said.
Security can be implemented once and it need not be applied to each host
site, the sources added.
The software also will expedite the handling of rich content, caching
HTML and other content much faster than current systems, the source
said. And it will hasten first-time access by "prefetching" embedded
HTML pages and images, the source said.
"This is a way for a central MUX [multiplexor], for lack of a better word,
to do fetching, caching, security-to serve as a gatekeeper," said another
Novell source.
One NetWare VAR close to Novell said the services also will provide
virus checking and various protocol gateways for LAN-web
interoperability.
VPN is the latest web buzzword. Basically, these networks are private,
secure spaces for groups on the public network. Among other things, they
obviate the need for expensive, dedicated telephone lines.
This area represents a "phenomenal opportunity" for many companies,
and Novell Directory Services could be a core asset for VPNs, said Joe
Firmage, a former Novell executive who is now chief executive of
USWeb, a Sunnyvale, Calif., integrator. "VPNs are going to depend upon
a software security infrastructure that exceeds the capabilities of most
firewalls. Novell's directory server, if properly engineered, can evolve to
manage [security at that level]. You can create security for VPNs using
the same management infrastructure used for LAN access," he said.
At Brainshare, Novell also will show off a new point-release of its
Groupwise messaging and groupware system, code-named Jolt. Due out
this summer, this release will add support for POP3 and dial-up SMTP.
Support for other web protocols, including Network News Transport
Protocol (NNTP) support and server support for Lightweight Directory
Access Protocol (LDAP), will come out later.
GroupWise has quietly built up some momentum with the recently
shipping 5.1 release, observers said. The city of Seattle has standardized
on it for its workforce, in what could be characterized as an affront to
Exchange Server, made by nearby Microsoft.
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