Another half-dozen support the emerging IP Security encryption standard. The rest of the board products depend on the server's operating system for access control. This relieves managers from having to set authentication directly on the device, user by user. Remote configuration and traffic monitoring capabilities are common to all the remote access devices we surveyed. Several also offer billing software so managers can monitor who is using the network the most and can charge back costs to individual departments.
Fault tolerance is a key concern for buyers of the chassis-based products.
Look for hot-swappable boards, modems, WAN interfaces, power supplies, cooling fans and daughterboards. Among the vendors in our survey, 3Com, Assured Access Technology, ECI Telecom and Ericsson deliver all or most of these hot-swappable components. The cards plug into standard servers and, with appropriate software, convert them into remote access devices. The number of dial-up sessions each card can support has been growing since these cards came on the scene in 1996. In our survey, Digi International hit the highest number with 48 analog connections or two PRI lines on a single card.