Virtual Private Networks

What do ISP Customers Expect from a VPN Service? continued

Troubled by lack of public key infrastructure? GTE's Advantage VPN^SM includes provisioning of GTE CyberTrust digital certificates, and management features that allow customers to issue and revoke certificates.

To protect against receiving infected email or files from VPN partners, Pilot's CPN includes Trend Micro's Viruswall as an option. Savvis' ProSecure^SM incorporates ISS RealSecure for attack recognition and response. These expanded security features indicate growing customer awareness of network vulnerabilities.

QoS Issues
Managed VPN services differentiate themselves in two dimensions: quality of service and level of support. Providers like GTE and MCI WorldCom offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with proactive monitoring and money-back guarantees. Consider this GTE SLA: 99.8 percent availability and 125 ms or less round-trip latency site-to-site, 97 percent busy-free remote access. Secure on-line access to real-time and historical usage data is an essential complement to SLAs. For finer granularity, the Xedia QVPNs used by MCI provide per-application bandwidth prioritization features and will add class-based queueing later this year.

Outsourcing Support Advantage
Support is one area where outsourced VPN services can offer customers a clear edge over roll-your-own VPNs, but 24x7 NOC support by VPN-savvy staff is only the starting point. GTE differentiates itself by offering superior web-based customer configuration, including the ability to remotely add/delete users and update security policies. MCI offers local language support and uses CPE modems for out-of-band trouble shooting. Pilot's Heuristic Defense Infrastructure provides ongoing upgrades to address previously detected attacks. ISPs must demonstrate their ability to run customer VPNs more reliably, more responsively, and at a lower cost than in-house IT staff.

The Cost Factor
Finally, don't forget the bottom line: Customers expect to save money by deploying outsourced VPN services. The number and placement of local Internet access points is key for remote access VPNs, while the global reach of an ISP's high-speed backbone is more important for site-to-site VPNs with stringent QoS demands.

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