Nortel Networks Corp. this week announced a new line-up of access gear intended to squeeze IP routing, VPN, firewall and WAN QoS capabilities into a single box for businesses of all sizes.
Nortel says its router/VPN boxes will allow businesses to purchase a single device for connecting remote branches and cut down on the management complexity involved with deploying separate VPN, router and firewall boxes at corporate sites.
Announced this week at the NetWorld+Interop 2002 show, the Contivity 1010, 1050 and 1100 gateways are aimed at providing site-to-site or remote-access VPN connections for small branch offices and teleworkers. Larger businesses can use the new Contivity 1700 and 2700 to connect branch offices and campus locations together with high-speed, secure WAN links, the company says.
All of the new Contivity boxes support stateful-inspection firewall capabilities and IP routing with support for protocols such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and RIPv2. All boxes come with unlimited licenses for Contivity VPN Client software for Windows. The devices can also tag different types of traffic with varying priority levels for ensuring that traffic such as IP voice, or time-sensitive applications, perform well over an encrypted WAN link.
For small or home offices, the Contivity 1010 provides two ports of 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet and can support encrypted VPN tunnels. The Contivity 1050 and 1100 include a four-port LAN switch, and can support up to 30 tunnels.
The Contivity 1700 can support up to 500 VPN tunnels, while the 2700 can handle 1,000 encrypted tunnels for larger site-to-site VPN deployments. Both boxes come with two integrated 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet ports and optional T-1 interfaces with an integrated CSU/DSU.
The Contivity 1010 will be priced at US$1,000, and the Contivity 1050 and 1100 are priced at US$1,300 and US$1,500 respectively. The small office/home office devices will be available in June. The Contivity 1700 and 2700 will be available for larger sites in July, but pricing has not been set yet.
