 |
WORLD ONLINE also provides
VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, by which companies and organizations can overcome geographic distances sharing
a dedicated wide-area-network for filesharing , network applications, video conferencing and general correspondence.
The most important point of a VPN is it's security. A VPN allows a remote user to securely access his company's
internal servers - even though they are behind a firewall, without compromising the security of the firewall. This
is different from an "extranet", where there may be a web site that allows authenticated access, and
it may communicate with internal company machines. When using an extranet, such as CARNET, a VPN is not necessary,
since the users are authenticated via SSL or whatever you want to use for the extranet site. Further, the client
is just a secure web browser, and the user is not accesing their internal systems using applications as if they
were on the internal LAN (Local Area Network).
The use of VPN's depends on a lot of things. First - the internal LAN must use TCP/IP protocol for its networking
in order to allow remote users to use that network structure as if they were local stations (Netware includes TCP/IP
for this reason). Then, the applications that run on that LAN must be of the type that allow client access over
a relatively slow line compared to the internal network, and still perform adequately. This of course is dependent
upon the particular applications that are run on the local LAN.
Finally, the internal LAN must be protected via firewall from the internet, and have a firewall that is capable
of supporting VPN access. The remote user must install a particular VPN client on their machine, in order to negotiate
with the VPN server on the firewall.
World Online provides a Firewall/VPN solution, in a "black box."
... standard configurations are as follows:
unlimited user firewall + 10 VPN clients:
$9995 + $99 for each additional VPN client
unlimited user firewall + 50 VPN clients:
$13595+ $99 for each additional VPN client
|
