Remote Access

KoolSpan: Bridging The Secure Access Gap

Part 3: Under the Hood

The bottom line
With any new product—especially a product with a novel approach—we like to see customer references. KoolSpan offered us two: according to Dr. Willie Brown, VP of Information Technology at Jackson State University, SecurEdge met his organization's need for "a singular security solution that supports our 10,000 users." Microsoft is using KoolSpan bridging in its Game Studios lab network. According to Microsoft's Chad Sohl, "Set up and configuration is very easy." ISPs and others interested in establishing a SecurEdge reseller relationship can apply to KoolSpan's partner program.

Questions that we asked KoolSpan during our evaluation were answered promptly and completely. We had little need for formal tech support, included with SecurEdge purchase. KoolSpan offers a money-back guarantee for the first 30 days. Hardware replacement is available for 90 days. Extended maintenance, which includes support and upgrades, runs 14 percent of the total license cost per year. Technical Support can be contacted by telephone (9am to 6pm EST) or e-mail; inquiries receive an initial reply within 2 hours. Standard resolution times range from 8 hours to 7 days, depending upon trouble ticket priority.

Our test drive with KoolSpan SecurEdge was largely successful. We found it very easy to install, relatively easy to use, and reliable when using Client Keys for secure remote access while traveling. We felt comfortable using SecurEdge to protect private traffic in known-risky venues like Wi-Fi Planet's show network (a playground for those demonstrating Wi-Fi attack tools). We had no trouble using SecurEdge concurrently with hotspot manager programs from T-Mobile (PCTEL) and iPass.

We expect to encounter a few bumps in the road with every secure access product. Most were overcome using common network admin tools (e.g., ping, tracert, LAN analyzers) and available documentation. In some cases, documentation could be expanded—for example, to further discuss topology options and impacts on surrounding network infrastructure. But true bugs were infrequent and isolated—a buggy W2K LAN connection, operator error leading to Key confusion, one partial software uninstall (remedied by repeating uninstall).

Our SE Kit evaluation exercised SecurEdge in a somewhat typical small business environment. In the long run, KoolSpan's approach must be vetted in large enterprises that pose the biggest challenge for secure access solutions, on-campus or off-site. Customers like Jackson State and Microsoft demonstrate that SecurEdge has met the needs of larger / more diverse networks, but KoolSpan is undeniably a young company, still building its track record and expanding client OS support.

Companies struggling with traditional VPNs or seeking a simple alternative to 802.1X can benefit from taking a look at KoolSpan. As a hardware-centric solution, KoolSpan may look a little more expensive at the start, but when you take ease of administration / use into account, SecurEdge offers strong security with competitive total cost of ownership.

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