New Oak Ships Industry's First Directory-Enabled Networking Product
Business Wire - December 01, 1997 08:30
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ACTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 1, 1997--
NOC 4000 Sets New Standard for Extranet Access
New Oak Communications, the leading provider of Infrastructure for Extranets, today announced the availability of the industry's first directory-enabled networking product, the NOC 4000. With the NOC 4000, network managers can use powerful directories--from companies like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL), and Netscape (NASDAQ:NSCP)--to provide customized network access to users while dramatically reducing administration time and complexity. The NOC 4000 is an Extranet Access Switch--a scalable hardware platform optimized for remote access over the Internet by integrating cutting-edge technology in VPNs, tunneling, encryption, bandwidth management, firewall security, and routing. "New Oak saw the need to create a networking device that focused on people--not packets," said Tom Pincince, founder and executive vice president of New Oak Communications. "The Extranet is the ideal first place to use directory-enabled networking to allow customized access to the corporate network. The NOC 4000 creates Personal Extranets based on the business role of the internal employee or external partner." "Directory-enabled networking provides huge benefits to users, allowing them to leverage a unified network model for integrating users, applications, and network services," said Dave Thompson, Microsoft's director of Windows NT Distributed Systems. "New Oak Communications is one of the leading supporters of Directory-enabled networking, and will help shape the initial specification." As a component of its Extranet Ready program, New Oak also announced today the submission of several Internet Drafts to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for significant extensions to the IP security protocol (IPsec). These innovations extend current standards to the Extranet, making them more secure and easier to manage and deploy.
NOC 4000 Leverages Corporate Directories to Support Personal Extranets
Microsoft, Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), and New Oak are leading the industry-wide standardization of LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), which extends the functionality of network devices by allowing user profiles to be stored in a shared central directory. This allows for much richer networking functionality to be delivered in a customized fashion for each user. "By shipping an LDAP directory-enabled networking device, New Oak Communications allows users to relate Extranet security and access parameters to people--not packets," said Jennifer Pigg, vice president of the Yankee Group. "Through the use of the directory, users can create detailed, granular profiles which customize access to information for employees, suppliers, partners, and customers to a greater degree than currently available in networking hardware." New Oak's profile implementation goes beyond any other approach to enable Personal Extranets. Users are assigned attributes that uniquely grant them specific access privileges on corporate Extranets. The NOC 4000 enables network managers to create directory-based profiles for customized encryption, tunneling, firewalling, prioritization, hours of access, administration, and logging. Users get reliable, secure access to the network every time: the salesperson on the road easily accesses the network to close a deal; a customer with clearance to the network can check product pricing and availability.
New Oak Leads with Extranet Standards
The NOC 4000 also features extensions to the Internet security standard--IPsec--to support strong authentication and reduce management overhead. New Oak has extended IPsec, and the companion key-exchange protocol ISAKMP/OAKLEY, to support one-time password and challenge-response approaches. For the first time token security--from strong authentication vendors such as Security Dynamics and AXENT--can be used with IPsec. Another New Oak proposal ends client configuration hassles by eliminating the need to statically configure every IPsec client. New Oak has created a DHCP-like protocol that assigns each client an IP address and configuration at connect time. "We removed two big obstacles to the deployment of Extranets by large companies: concerns about security and end-user software configuration," said Michael Feinstein, vice president of product marketing at New Oak Communications. "Our support for strong authentication and stateless clients is proving to be a big winner with early customers. And, in an effort to promote the use of Extranets, we are making our work available to the standards bodies." These innovative extensions of IPsec have been submitted to the IETF as Internet drafts. The document names are as follows:
Configuration of Tunnel Mode
IPsec Endpoint Parameters: draft-ohara-ipsecparam-00.txt
Preshared Key Extensions for ISAKMP/OAKLEY: draft-mamros-pskeyext-00.txt
Token Card Extensions
for ISAKMP/OAKLEY: draft-ohara-tokencard-00.txt
About the NOC 4000
The NOC 4000 is a market and technology breakthrough for remote
access over the Internet. Called an Extranet Access Switch, the NOC
4000 marks a paradigm shift for remote access from the complexity of
expensive remote access servers, dial-up ports, and leased-lines to a
single, comprehensive, easily managed device that is optimized for
Extranet access. The NOC 4000 combines cutting-edge technology in
VPNs, tunneling, encryption, bandwidth management, firewall security,
and routing in a single hardware platform. With the NOC 4000, each
user gets a Personal Extranet which provides customized access to
networked services and resources based on the unique needs of that
user.
Pricing and Availability
The NOC 4000, supporting from 200 to 2,000 simultaneous users and
including an unlimited license for New Oak's IPsec Extranet Access
Client, has a retail price of $50,000 and is available immediately.
About New Oak Communications
Based in Acton, Massachusetts, New Oak Communications was founded
in 1996 by New England's leading executives and engineers in the
networking industry--from companies including Bay Networks (NYSE:BAY),
Forrester Research (NASDAQ:FORR), 3Com (NASDAQ:COMS), Raptor
(NASDAQ:RAPT), and Shiva (NASDAQ:SHVA). The Company is the leading
provider of Infrastructure for Extranets, enabling corporate partners
and employees to use the Internet for private communication, commerce,
and collaboration. New Oak's Extranet Access Switch allows remote
users to securely access the corporate network via the Internet. New
Oak was named a "Top 25 Hot Start Up" by Data Communications Magazine
and was a Best of Show Finalist at Networld+InterOp. New Oak
Communications is on the World Wide Web at newoak.com .
New Oak, New Oak Communications, Inc., Infrastructure for Extranets, NOC 4000, Personal Extranets, Extranet Ready, the Extranet Ready logo, and the New Oak logo are trademarks of New Oak Communications, Inc.
CONTACT: New Oak Communications Schwartz Communications, Inc.
John Burnham Helen Shik
978/266-1011 x115 781/684-0770 x6587
jburnham@newoak.com hshik@schwartz-pr.com
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