Nortel fires a shot at Shiva in VPN war

Nortel has challenged Virtual Private Network (VPN) partner Shiva's claim that it has a nine-month lead over the competition with regards to tunnelling servers.

The telco has announced details of CVX-1800, which it has been developing since the acquisition of Aptis several months ago. CVX-1800 is aimed at carriers and ISPs. It has a modem cooling feature and currently has 1,100-1,200 ports per chassis. Trials of CVX-1800 are presently taking place, with the product expected to be put on the European market in the fourth quarter of this year.

"Everyone says they've got a VPN tunnel server, but we challenge them to show that their box is working," commented Phil Crocker, Shiva's international marketing manager. These claims come after the launch of Shiva's LanRover VPN Gateway tunnelling server.

VPN technology dispenses with traditional remote access servers, offering cheaper and easier remote access provision over the internet.

Traditionally, Nortel and Shiva has had strong ties in the VPN field with Nortel acting as an OEM for Shiva products. The long term future of the relationship is in doubt, however, following Nortel's purchase of Bay Networks.