Netgear launches SSL VPN for SoHo and SMB
Published:11-September-2006
By BR staff writer
Netgear Inc has begun shipping an SSL VPN concentrator for the SoHo/SMB market with support for up to 25 concurrent tunnels.
The Santa Clara, California-based vendor has three product groups: consumer and home products, carrier and SMB, which it defines as companies up to 250 employees, and it is the third group that has launched the ProSafe SSL VPN Concentrator 25, also known as the SSL312, explained Vivek Chugh, its product line manager.
Netgear has been in VPNs before, but only on the IPsec side, where is has sold them as part of its firewall/VPN offerings, Chugh explained.
"However, for the small company, the key issue with IPsec VPNs is the time consuming process of configuring the individual clients, as well as the cost of each client license," he went on. "With SSL, by contrast, the technology uses the SSL support in any Web browser, so there is no configuration and no client licensing."
SSL VPNs have been in the enterprise market for four or five years already from companies like Cisco and Juniper, Chugh recounted, "but now the barriers to entry are falling, with SSL acceleration going into silicon." To this end, Netgear last month announced an agreement with Mountain View, California-based Cavium Networks Inc to use its SSL acceleration processor in its devices, he explained.
The SSL312 has a list price of $545 and will be available from Netgear resellers as well as ecommerce sites. Chugh said the majority of Netgear's usual competitors in the SoHo/SMB market, such as Linksys, D-Link, Belkin and Buffalo have yet to launch SSL VPNs, though companies from the enterprise market such as Juniper and Cisco are trying to come down into the space, while low-end firewall and security appliance vendor SonicWALL already has an SSL offering.
Netgear seeks to differentiate itself, he went on, by including enterprise-grade features such as integration with directories such as LDAP, Active Directory, NTDomains and RADIUS "to enable granular policy control."
