May 5, 1997 10:00 AM ET
Remote absence -- Management of remote sites a major headache for IT zdnet.com
By Stacy Lavilla and Scott Berinato
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ÿWhen Tim Callahan mentions remote access and says, "It's passable, but it's just not clean right now," you get the feeling he really wants to say that it stinks.
Callahan, principal at Palo Colorado Software, in Oakland, Calif., wanted to let users in one office connect to the Internet via dial-up modems because it fit their needs more cost-effectively than Web access via ISDN, which other employees used.
But when he installed the analog accounts, his management software--in this case CompuServe Inc.'s CSI 3.0--switched every user to a default dial-up setting. "The software didn't recognize we wanted different configurations at different clients," Callahan said, miffed that he had to travel out to the site to reconfigure each ISDN client individually. "That type of management should be there." Bandwidth and management on the LAN have improved markedly, as a host of vendors will prove at NetWorld+Interop in Las Vegas this week. But beyond the LAN, many corporate sites are still forced to cobble together patchwork solutions to communicate with islands of remote users.
Remote access has become a preoccupation of network administrators because more users are working away from the central office, creating a remote access boom that this year will reach $4.4 billion in revenues, according to Infonetics Research Inc., in San Jose, Calif.
Actions such as California's legislation that one in 10 workers must telecommute by the end of the century will require fast, reliable network access, as if those users were on the LAN itself.
The remote access nirvana, IS managers say, is this: ubiquitous access, no matter if it's 56K-bps modems or a 1.5M-bps T-1 line, with a single management interface on top that handles the complex guts underneath.
IT shouldn't be holding its breath. Because WANs by nature comprise many different technological pieces, getting multifarious vendors to tie them together seamlessly is proving to be a truly momentous challenge. "We're not even close to [seamless administration] of network interface cards yet," said Kevin Tolly, president of the Tolly Group, in Manasquan, N.J. "Imagine trying to do this for the whole WAN."
Today, at the central site, corporations have two basic choices. The first is to maintain separate modem pools for dial-in users, which then connect to a remote access server, then to a router, which maps the call to the designated LAN. The other option is to invest in a combination access switch, which receives calls and switches or routes data simultaneously.
To simplify central site administration and configuration, many vendors are opting to put more functionality into a single communications device. Where once administrators had to maintain separate modem pools, routers and remote access servers, this functionality is merging into a single modular switch to enable sites to add functionality and capabilities as they need them.
The advantage? Modems, routers and remote access servers can be managed using a single interface and software platform. The downside, of course, is that it creates a single point of failure.
"If one portion goes down, you lose the whole box," said a network administrator at a major publishing company who requested anonymity.
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Service time lost to users "tweaking" remote access equipment:
Mobile users:.............. 6 hours/month
Telecommuters:.......... 5 hours/month
Remote office users:... 3 hours/month
Source: Infonetics Research
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On the client side, IT managers must sift through a dizzying array of options. Cable access and ISDN may work well for stationary telecommuters, while high-bandwidth DSL (digital subscriber line) technology may become a less expensive alternative to leased lines for remote offices. Dial-up access, at 28.8K, 33.6K and soon 56K bps, remains the best option for users who need portability, and wireless, though slower and less reliable, fits the needs of users who don't have easy access to land lines. While these client-side options are increasing at a breakneck pace, many are still not widely available. As a result, road warriors are suffering because, while their network houses larger, more complex files, they still have to dial up from cagey hotel lines at 28.8K or 33.6K bps and transfer files "while they're taking a shower," as one user put it.
The new crop of 56K-bps modems hold promise for simple upgrades and a fair boost in throughput, but most enterprises deem it foolish to toy with the nonstandard, noninteroperable devices. And ISDN still isn't widely available and remains fairly expensive compared with an analog line. Cable modems, for their part, remain largely untested for data use. Then there's DSL. Some users think it's ideal for remote offices because it combines the familiar copper wire infrastructure with speeds reaching 8M bps downstream. But it's neither thoroughly tested nor widely available.
Regardless of the pieces chosen, sewing them together into a seamless network fabric remains the core issue for IT and its users.
"[End users] want to click on an icon and be connected no matter what they're using," said one user at a consulting firm with 30 remote offices, who requested anonymity. "There's a lot of frustration when it doesn't work like this."
Virginia Brooks, an analyst with the Aberdeen Group, in Boston, summed up the remote access issue like this: "It has the potential to be a management nightmare."
Many large corporations seek a single software interface to manage both LANs and WANs.
"I want to be able to [switch access technologies] without changing my front end," said Callahan. "Right now I'm going through an ISDN router, but maybe next year I need DSL in some places. I want communications software to handle hardware independent of the type of hardware installed."
Currently, sites piece together LAN management software such as Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView with central-site modem software, such as Shiva Corp.'s ShivOS.
As the network manager at the publishing company explained, if a corporation uses different vendors' hardware, there is little that can be done to manage it all. "If you had one bank of modems running on a Shiva [remote access server], and another environment running off of a Cisco [Systems Inc.] terminal server, the setup and troubleshooting are going to be vastly different," said the administrator.
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Projected cost of remote users' downtime:
1993: $3.85M revenue loss; $3.7M productivity loss
1997: $22.8M revenue loss; $3.9M productivity loss
Source: Infonetics Research
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Some hope may be on the horizon. FTP Software Inc. will introduce at NetWorld+Interop Internet software that enables administrators to manage IP networks both locally and remotely via push technology.
The Andover, Mass., company's Agent Applications for IP networks automatically pushes data to users' desktops with instructions that enable it to analyze respective desktop conditions and act accordingly.
In the meantime, how do IT managers make remote access work today? The safest bet is to rely heavily on creating a single network or hardware configuration, and duplicating that across all branch offices and telecommuters.
"We try to use the cookie cutter approach," said Bob Neal, network operations manager at Tandem Computers Inc., in Cupertino, Calif. "From a support structure, you try to standardize on something."
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Outsourcing services offer remote access relief
By Stephanie LaPolla
IS managers have yet to tame the wild beasts associated with remote access: management and security. Now, telecommunications companies and Internet service providers are jumping in to help. Concentric Network Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc. are just two of the companies rolling out remote access outsourcing services at NetWorld+ Interop in Las Vegas this week. By turning over administrative and support tasks to an outsourcing company, corporations are finding they can save money and focus on keeping the internal LAN healthy.
For instance, Bay Networks Inc. officials have estimated a savings of about $50,000 per month using Concentric's RemoteLink remote access service, compared with the cost of dial-up 800 services and additional administrators who would be required to support 2,000 mobile workers.
"Remote access is support-intensive," said Kevin Cantoni, director of network systems at Bay, in Santa Clara, Calif. "If I can outsource that and get my staff to do more strategic network upgrades and planning, it's a huge value."
With RemoteLink, Concentric's staff takes over service and support of the modem pool. Rather than requiring remote users to dial into an 800-number, they dial into the Concentric private network, which connects to a corporate LAN via a T-1 line, said Concentric officials in Cupertino, Calif.
One critical issue with outsourcing remote access makes some IS professionals nervous. "We will never outsource because of security," said Frank Meza, senior systems analyst at Paramount Pictures Corp., in Hollywood, Calif. Meza uses Bell Atlantic Network Integration ISDN services but maintains the network himself. "We want the controls [for] security reasons."
Concentric offers encryption services as a security precaution. Similarly, Lucent will install a firewall for a customer as part of its NetCare service, its new multivendor integration and management division launched last week. NetCare provides remote access, voice, video and data communications project management and telephony application integration, said officials at Lucent's NetCare division in Denver. |
