Extranet in a box

Service providers pondering entry into the extranet arena have their choice of vendors when it comes to network supporting equipment.

TimeStep, which was recently acquired by Newbridge Networks, and Nortel Networks are two companies that offer one-box solutions for virtual private networks (VPNs), meaning that corporations already using VPN solutions, such as remote access and intranets, have to look no further than their current equipment to implement an extranet.

Three key components separate TimeStep's VPN products, the Permit enterprise product line, from its competitors, says Roy Pereira, senior product manager for TimeStep. IP security (IPSec) keeps information safe, public key infrastructures allow companies to manage the networks and policy features allow users to control who has access to their extranets and what level of information they can access.

"You have to make sure your partners only have access to the correct information because in a lot of cases, your partners are also your competitors," Pereira says.

Nortel's Contivity Extranet Switches were built from scratch to support VPNs, says Jean Wilson, product manager of the extranet switch product line for Nortel (see figure). "A lot of other vendors are trying to simply add a VPN [capability] onto a router and call it a VPN-enabled router," Wilson says. "Because we've written the code from the ground up and support all leading standards, it makes for a really robust solution."

Equipment from both companies is located on the customer premises, behind the access router and parallel to the firewall. TimeStep's equipment is complimentary to a company's existing infrastructure, interoperable with any router and firewall available, Pereira says.

"That's important because people don't want to have to go out and buy a new router," he says. "It's not just about the money, either - it's learning how to manage these new devices."

Wilson says Nortel's VPN equipment also is compatible with existing routers and firewall systems, but more customers are choosing the option of converging all three technologies. The Contivity switch has support for a Check Point firewall and allows for dynamic routing. However, some network managers may not be comfortable with a consolidated box because they are familiar with their existing routers, Wilson says.

Both companies' boxes include IPSec devices that can authenticate and encrypt messages. Public key infrastructures manage all the digital certificates used on the network, Pereira says.

While equipment from TimeStep and Nortel is used primarily to deploy public Internet-based networks, both companies are aligned with various certified service providers that service Automotive Industry Action Group trading partners. Ameritech is using equipment from both companies, while Bell Canada and AT&T are using the TimeStep products.

In the public Internet arena, Bell Canada resells TimeStep's equipment for extranet purposes over the Internet, and Nortel sells its boxes to service providers such as GTE Internetworking, New Brunswick Telecom, Bell Nexxia and UUNet, who in turn offer VPN solutions as managed services to end users.