VPN, VPN, VPN

Networld+Interop 2002 will be encamped at the Las Vegas Convention center next week. Although the main onslaught of press releases hasn't hit yet, I'm getting some sense of what I'll see (and won't see) at next week's show. Let's see what we've got...

Although many products have already been announced in this category, I suspect some companies are holding off introductions in order to get a little extra oomph from the show coverage.

Celestix, long known for their small, but mighty Aries, and newer, slightly beefier Taurus Office Server Appliances, has partnered with Checkpoint Software and over the past few months announced a series of VPN and VPN Security appliances based on both platforms. The new products have checkpoint's VPN-1/FireWall-1software built right in, but don't support the all-in-one server functions of the Server Applicance models. The Security appliance products are only available through Check Point certified Resellers and Ingram Micro and are priced from $799 for the Aries and $2499 for the Taurus.

Celestix is also taking a run at the SOHO VPN router market with the introduction of the Orion Security Appliance series. Pricing ranges from $299 for a 5 user, VPN pass-through model up to $1199 for a 25 user version that supports 10 IPsec tunnels with site to site capability. (See the handy feature comparison table here.)

SOHO routers with built-in IPsec endpoints seem to be the latest flavor-of-the-month in this hot product segment. These products are partly a response to the increased focus on network security that Sept 11 has caused, and also as a way for manufacturers to differentiate themselves from the pack.

Among newer goodies that they won't tell me about yet, Linksys will be showing their aggressively priced DI-804V, which is the VPN version of their DI-804, which I also recently Sonicwall and Watchguard, to fire back some sort of response, but at this point it looks like I'll have to wait until next week to see.

To "g" or not to "g"?

It'll be interesting to see if anyone trots out 802.11g products. Given all the buzz about aggressive chip sampling schedules that I heard in January at CES, I would think that someone will announce 11g product, especially given the recent Funk Software, Meetinghouse Data Communications, ReefEdge (watch out, link to PDF file!) and others.

That's it for now. I'll post more info as news items as it becomes available.