Network solution piques interest of universities

At Networld + Interop last week, 6-month-old Vernier Networks (www.verniernetworks.com) came out of its infancy to announce its first product and sale.

The Vernier Networks System provides a way to secure and manage wireless LANs.

“The total system consists of two pieces,” said Doug Klein, Vernier CEO. “We have a box we call the Access Manager and another box we call the Control Server.”

The access manager, which costs $2,500, is placed in the data path and enforces any rules and authentication policies that the user must adhere to.

“It’s meant to be as small and fast as possible since it’s in the data stream,” Klein said.

The control server, on the other had, is bigger because it has to interface with the local authentication server and manage up to 10 access managers. It’s where all of the centralized logic lives, he said. It costs $15,000.

The control server also allows the network manager to define a set of access rights for the user. It can deny access to certain parts of the network, redirect access to another area or allocate bandwidth based on who users are.

“This whole operation takes a few seconds,” Klein said. “At that point, the user is now accessing the Net.”

Because the mobility of users is so important today, the system is designed to allow users to take wireless devices with them and maintain connectivity.

“We’ve implemented it such that you can move anywhere in the network and, through the coordination of the control sever, you’re still connected, you’re still authenticated and your sessions are still running,” Klein said.

Klein said that because there is such a variety of wireless devices out there, Vernier made the system “agnostic to any device.”

“It’s not workable to require you to upgrade software every time you have a new device,” he said.

Also during the show, Vernier announced its first sale to NTT Multimedia Communications Laboratories (www.nttlabs.com). NTT is working with the University of California at Berkeley (www.berkeley.edu) to wire the campus with an 802.11 network.

Vernier also has completed beta tests with the University of Washington (www.washington.edu). “Universities are very, very hot on this,” Klein said. “They are deploying 802.11 extremely fast because it solves all kinds of historical wiring problems and their users, the students, are very mobile.”