Extra helping: Bay broadens VPN, extranet options

Bay Networks will use the Networld+Interop stage this week to showcase new carrier provisioning features for its extranet switches and a low-end switch aimed at luring more small and medium-sized businesses into the virtual private network and extranet markets.

The vendor has developed a Directory Enabled Provisioning feature for all its VPN and extranet systems. It allows carriers providing the solutions to establish and manage them from a central directory based on existing protocols (see figure).

"If you're a service provider, you need a way to centrally provision these types of devices," said Mike Feinstein, vice president of product management at Bay. "This gives them the ability to make a local configuration move that will apply globally."

In addition, because corporations deploying VPN and extranet solutions don't want carriers to have access to the user names and passwords of their own networks, the system allows customers to maintain a level of security and control over their information, Feinstein said.

"One of the objections people have to rolling out VPNs is that they don't want to turn over the keys of their office to their service providers," he said.

Bay is also introducing its ES 1000 extranet switch to appeal to smaller businesses. The switch supports 50 simultaneous sessions and costs $7000, a price point the vendor views as highly competitive to the alternatives for connecting remote users.

"This marketplace started out with the largest companies, but small companies are paying the most for their current remote access solutions," Feinstein said.

"Certainly all sizes of companies are planning to use VPNs because of the cost advantages," said Michael Howard, CEO of Infonetics Research, San Jose. "This is a good way for a company to get started setting up VPNs for smaller numbers of users."

Bay also has released Version 1.5 of its extranet software to add tunneling, fault-tolerance, monitoring and scalability to its switch line.