The skyrocketing number of teleworkers and branch offices, coupled with the rush of people and companies demanding access to the Internet and other on-line services has produced an acute need for concentration technology allowing network managers to manage multitudes of connections and efficiently deliver services to network users.
Gandalf's Remote Access Concentration (RAC) software provides flexible, scalable and secure concentration for all remote users. RAC works with a variety of switched and leased carrier services (including ISDN), allowing you to economically address all of your organization's remote access concentration needs.
Remote users should feel as if they are locally connected to the central LAN. Internet surfers using Mosaic, Netscape and other graphical browsers should feel like they are part of the web network. This necessitates high-performance access using internet working products designed for completely seamless and transparent connectivity. Gandalf's Remote Access Concentration software allows you to effectively concentrate all of your teleworkers, remote offices, suppliers and customers, giving them instant access to all defined resources.
RAC supports inbound and outbound dialing, with simultaneous connectivity for up to 72 LANs. Up to 1,000 remote LANs can be configured per system giving flexibility and control when implementing even the highest user-to-port contention ratios.
Whether or not your network delivers chargeable services having a reliable and comprehensive mechanism for call detail recording is becoming increasingly important for security and other communications management needs. RAC delivers a wealth of call statistics which can be used by your accounting and security applications. Statistics include: calling ID, remote LAN name, duration of call, bytes received and transmitted and the direction of the call.
As a means of ensuring that charges for switched digital services (such as ISDN) are incurred only when required, you can configure connections as your application requires. Gandalf's comprehensive IPX filtering and spoofing function eliminates unnecessary link charges, allowing remote Novell users to efficiently communicate with central site resources as required. In addition, connectivity times and their associated costs are minimized through the employment of Gandalf's industry leading data compression which delivers compression rates of up to 8:1. These compression rates mean that you can effectively achieve up to 1.0Mbps throughput on a Basic Rate ISDN link. This reduces line charges and allows remote users' response times to parallel those of local users.
Solution adaptability and flexibility are also made possible by RAC's comprehensive feature set. Through PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) support, RAC ensures that other PPP compliant internet-working devices can be concentrated, giving users more choices when equipping themselves with remote access hardware and software. RAC also supports the latest PPP standard, PPP Multilink, which enables two channels to be aggregated together to provide enhanced network performance.
Gandalf's Remote Access Concentration software provides a wide array of features to secure your central LAN. When used with Gandalf's XpressConnect family of high-performance remote devices, RAC will validate the serial number of each calling device. PPP provides two additional methods of security through PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) and CHAP (Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol).
Now, with support for tokenized user authentication systems (e.g. Security Dynamics' SecurID (TM)), RAC ensures that every user's identity is validated by the secure host. In addition to these security measures, RAC also supports many network based security provisions such as packet filtering.
Dial-out efficiency is maximized with channel grouping. Switched 56Kbps and ISDN channels can be grouped such that when dialing out, RAC automatically chooses a link from the group which minimizes connectivity costs.
RAC can be loaded onto either one of two high-performance, adaptable and scaleable hardware platforms. For concentration sites requiring fault-tolerance, redundant power (eleven-slot only) and hot-swappable hardware modules, Xpressway's four-slot or eleven-slot chassis systems equipped with RLAN modules deliver unparalleled performance and flexibility. If your concentration needs do not demand the higher end feature set of the Xpressway system, Gandalf also offers the XpressStack platform. XpressStack is a stackable platform, enabling Gandalf's customers to take advantage of all of RAC functionality at a lower initial investment and at a lower price per port for sites requiring fewer connections.
The flexible and fault-tolerant Xpressway chassis ensures network resilience and uninterrupted service through redundant power supplies. Modules supporting BRI, PRI and high-speed serial interfaces are hot-swappable, allowing you to add, remove and exchange cards without shutting down the concentration system. Like Gandalf's entire Remote Access and Concentration product suite, Xpressway RLAN hardware platforms are designed for industry-leading performance. Multiple high-speed RISC processing engines work together driving high I/O speed and rendering consistent data compression.
XpressStack BRI and XpressStack PRI are Gandalf's modular stackable concentration platforms featuring interface options for Basic Rate ISDN and Primary Rate ISDN. As your needs grow, additional XpressStacks may be added whenever necessary. Your system stays flexible and you will never have to invest more than you need.
Multiple XpressStack BRI and PRI platforms can be easily joined through XpressStack VLS (Virtual LAN Switch) or Xpressway VLS, the XpressStack high-performance interconnect mechanism. VLS turns XpressStack into a high-performance hot-swappable workgroup.
Management capabilities are delivered through full SNMP management. RAC ships with Gandalf's MS-Windows configuration console which simplifies installation and management. RAC also supports Telnet access for remote configuration and management.
Bandwidth Management: Automatic Initiation or Tear-Down of Remote Connections Destination Address to ISDN Number Mapping Database of 1,000 Remote LANs Stored per Xpressway RLANsubsystem or XpressStack On-Demand RIP/SAP and IPX Spoofing Security: Calling Line ID Remote Device Serial Number Verification Black Listing Broadcast and Multicast Filters PPP PAP and CHAP Security Support Security Dynamics SecurID Support Configuration and Managment: Gandalf Signature Console (MS-Windows Based) and VT100 Console (Pull-Down Menus) Password Protected, Local or Remote Access throuth TELNET Real-Time Statistics Monitoring, Multiple Windows, and Remote Reset SNMP MIB II Traps, Gets and Sets, With Proprietary Extensions TCP/IP Address Protected Software/Configuration Download Filtering: Static and Dynamic Address Filtering, Supports up to 4000 Addresses Connections: XpressStack BRI Local Ethernet LAN Connection Up to Sixteen Simultaneous 56Kbps or 64Kbps Connections Maximum of Four Modules per System Controller XpressStack PRI North American Variant Local Ethernet LAN Connection up to 23 simultaneous 56Kbps or 64Kbps Connections XpressStack PRI European Variant Local Ethernet LAN Connection Up to 30 Simultaneous 56Kbps or 64Kbps Connections Xpressway RLAN LAN: One AUI Connector or via Ethernet-Backplane BRI: Eight ISDN S/T Interfaces per Module, Maximum Four Modules per System Controller PRI: One ISDN S/T Interface per Module, Maximum Three (North American) or Two (European) Modules per System Controller XSM: 16 Synchronous Serial Interfaces per Module Supporting RS232, V.11, and V.35, Maximum Four Four Modules per System Controller; Maximum 72 Channels per RLAN Subsystem Wide Area ProtocolsLink: PPP, PPP Multilink Gandalf (SL/ML) Single link / Multi link