That means that it might not be necessary to buy products that are designed single-purpose boxes that act as the gateway between VPN multiple PCs at individual sites and their connections to the Internet. The hardware platform used was a PC with a 500MHz processor. Just routing packets this small taxes processors even without encryption because more of the packets pass through per second. Fewer of these large packets pass through the device per second, requiring less route processing. OpenReach leases its Linux-based gateway software to customers and manages their VPNs for a monthly fee.
Customers have to supply their own PC hardware and Internet connections.
In the case of OpenReach, users get a packet-filtering firewall. Or a customer could buy a WatchGuard SOHO for about the same price, get a firewall and a year's worth of service for free. The question was whether general-purpose hardware was fast enough. Feedback Tell us your thoughts on this article or the issues raised in it. When you click Submit, you'll be taken back to this article.