Altiga also makes two tunnel servers for service providers. The larger of them supports 5,000 simultaneous callers, and can divide those sessions among as many as 100 different customers. Compatible Systems makes VPN servers that can handle up to 40,000 simultaneous dial-up VPN connections, or 4,000 connections with other Compatible Systems boxes. The Altiga and Compatible gear will build on Cisco's existing VPN products. Cisco will now be able to offer VPN products to both corporate users and service providers.
Corporate users can buy the gear to build their own VPNs.
Service providers can use it to support two different types of VPN service. An example of the first might be an Internet service provider that would run a dial-up VPN service for an enterprise. End users would be issued a VPN client for their PCs to establish Internet tunnels from PCs to corporate headquarters. The ISP would establish a tunnel from that POP across the Internet to the POP that connects to corporate headquarters. Both types of services are projected to experience a boom within the next year.