What are the differences between the Nortel Contivity VPN Switch and the Cisco Altiga or 5000 box?

[Chris Carlson]

I would have to say that Nortel Contivity and Altiga
are very similar.  They both terminate other VPN
sessions besides IPSec; they do PPTP, L2TP, and
Windows 2000's L2TP/IPSec hybrid.  Plus they do branch
office tunnels.

You're going to find that it's the little differences
between the two and how they map to your network and
security policies that makes or break a candidate.

Check out those details closely.  I like the
Contivity's ability to push DNS and WINS settings from
the server to the client at connection time, plus the
ability to seamlessly use RADIUS for client
authentication and as a proxy to SecurID, NT domains,
etc.  Look for the details!

Two words about Altiga: I'm not sure if Mike Dews of
Cisco would disagree :-), but when any company gets
acquired, the transition into the larger company
causes circa a 6 month disruption.  Cisco acquired
Altiga and Compatible recently and is trying to hard
integrate them and consolidate to one VPN client.  I'm
concerned about that.

I know for a fact that when Nortel bought Bay Networks
which bought New Oak for the Contivity product, they
lost 4-6 months of development and feature updates.
But that was a year ago and I think they're back on
track.

And a year ago, a little birdie friend of mine at
Altiga told me that they weren't as good as the
Contivity.  Heck, Altiga was running a promo where
they BOUGHT back your Contivity if you purchased an
Altiga box.  Talk about running scared!  Take that for
what it's worth...  :-)

I strongly suggest that when you narrow down your
choices via research, get them into your lab, test
network, or alpha test on your production network and
hammer at them head to head.

One other thing:  Really focus on the IPSec client.
Unless you decide to use PPTP or Windows 2000, the
IPSec client will cause most of your headaches from a
support perspective: fulfillment, installation,
configuration, support, client "breaking" other apps,
other apps "breaking" the client, etc.

Good luck!  Keep us in the loop on what you selected!

Chris
--

>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: Jon Zivan
>   To: VPN at SECURITYFOCUS.COM
>   Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2000 4:51 PM
>   Subject: What are the differences between the
> Nortel Contivity VPN Switch and the Cisco Altiga or
> 5000 box?
>
>
>   Here is a candidate for the FAQ:
>
>   What are the differences between the Nortel
> Contivity VPN Switch and the Cisco Altiga or 5000
> box?
>
>   I have been doing some research for my company and
> it is still unclear to me if there are any
> significant differences between the two.
>
>   Also, the Nortel and Cisco boxes seem to be rated
> by how many clients they can terminate. Dose anyone
> know how many clients PopToP can terminate with,
> say, a pIII 500 128mb box?
>
>
>
>


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