May 29, 2001 The requirement in business and private sectors to send confidential material over the Internet is undoubtedly increasing as the Internet becomes the de facto means of communication. This growth is being driven partly by the recent but more frequent reports of non-protected data being accessed by outside sources. Other driving forces are undoubtedly the concept of wireless technology and the increased popularity of telecommuting, where constant but secure access to the main office is a necessity.
Until recently, organisations have had to rely on dedicated lines being supplied by Service Providers which provide guaranteed security but involve high associated costs for both the provider and, consequently, the end user. VPN technology provides the same security over non-dedicated lines by setting up a 'virtual but private' network.
According to independent sources, the predicted revenue from IP-based VPN services will exceed $18 billion by 2004 in the United States alone (Frost and Sullivan: this includes hardware and software services) and up to 55 percent of Service Provider's customers plan to establish VPNs (Forrester Research). Although some of these services are already being addressed, many Service Providers have yet to introduce their VPN strategy and are looking to outsource the development of software to ensure their time to market implementations.
The concept of a Virtual Private Network is widely utilised to describe a variety of scenarios. Spider's initial implementation supports some of the protocols required to develop the heart of a VPN as part of a shared network over which the virtual private connection is made.
Based primarily on Spider's implementation of SpiderPPP and SpiderTCP, the initial release will include support for Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol [L2TP] and IP Security [IPSec]. Spider's reputation for its extensive implementation of both the SpiderPPP and SpiderTCP stacks initiated customers world-wide to request the company to further develop those stacks into a comprehensive, fully-featured SpiderVPN offering.
"One of Spider's major OEMs has already shown considerable interest in our new product implementation" commented Dave Noble, President Spider Software. "Indeed, they were instrumental in Spider's initial development. Several other customers are now also requesting part or all of the SpiderVPN stack."
SpiderVPN has been developed using Spider's implementation of the STREAMS architecture. This enables the stack to be easily ported to any off-the-shelf operating system or stand alone with Spider's native STREAMS. The flexibility of SpiderSTREAMS also renders the protocols easily supportable on any processor / architecture combination. In conjunction with Spider's recent announcement for support of the Linux operating system, the new product is perfectly targeted for customers wishing to develop secure Internet access devices.
