Comptel: Global Crossing enhances VPN product

ORLANDO -- Global Crossing today announced a new round of enhancements for its IP VPN product to include migration to MPLS-based IP VPNs, support for IP v6, global multicasting, managed Voice over IP and support for Remote Access VPN that includes home offices.

The improvements to the four-year-old flagship VPN product are part of the company’s ongoing effort to meet enterprise needs, said Anthony Christie, Global Crossing’s chief marketing officer, at the Comptel show in Orlando.

“These are things our enterprise customers are telling us that they need,” he said.

Global Crossing has the advantage of having been in the VPN marketplace and having a stable product to which they are regularly making enhancements, said Brian Washburn, analyst with Current Analysis.

The Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) enhancements will enable business customers to migrate from legacy networks to a converged IP network without disrupting their existing routing topology and network infrastructure. Ipv6 support adds the capability to securely support access by mobile data devices such as PDAs and cellphones.

Global Crossing is using the IETF's "sham lines" capability to automatically route frame relay traffic over its IP VPN network without having to replace or upgrade the customer's CPE.

The multicast capability delivers multimedia content to multiple end points simultaneously, conserving network bandwidth. “Other people do multicast but we think we are first to do it globally for VPNs,” Christie said.

The Managed VoIP feature allows business customers to route both TDM and IP-based voice traffic over an IP VPN to save money on toll calls, and gain the benefits of on-net dialing. Remote VPN Access support will allow businesses to outsource management of remote access by small offices or even home offices to Global Crossing, Christie said.

“A business might not want to do this for everyone but for its C-level employees, they could offer this service for home offices,” he said. One potential feature is a fail-over option that supports the service if the primary ISP goes down.

Global Crossing is already seeing a major boom in its VPN business, the company said. Traffic has increased more than 200% in the first three quarters of this year.