Microsoft To Add VPN To Wi ndows NT

Users to gain secure Internet connections and lower networking costs, says vendor

By Stuart J. Johnston

icrosoft plans additions to Windows NT's capabilities by year's end aimed at reducing networking costs for users by letting them replace expensive dial-up or leased lines with secure connections over the Internet. The technology, code-named BaseCamp, will provide virtual private network (VPN) capabilities on top of NT 4.0.

While VPN technology will not completely replace dial-up or leased lines, the potential for BaseCamp to reduce networking costs appeals to some NT users. "On a WAN, how much does a 56-Kbps line cost? There's something we can talk about," says Darrell Pargmann, NT special intere st group leader at the Central Texas LAN Association, a user group in Austin with many state government agency members. "[With BaseCamp], you could get a pretty-good-sized pipe and still be cheap."

BaseCamp is currently in what Microsoft describes as technical beta testing-the stage before full-scale end-user testing, says Lloyd Spencer, group product manager for Windows communications. It's scheduled to ship by year's end.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has already put some of the pieces in place. Windows 95 and Windows NT Workstation clients already support the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, which lets a user set up a secure conversation between two points over the Internet. Once the link is established, it appears to the user as if the connection is a dedicated dial-up or leased line.

For instance, a PPTP connection could be used for someone working from home to hook into a company's private network via the Internet. However, the connection would actually take place over the public realm of the Inter net. PPTP provides encoding and other security features to keep anyone from seeing that user's network traffic.

NT Server also has support for PPTP built in, as well as routing technology so users' network packets can be correctly routed around the network. That routing technology is part of NT's Remote Access Services (RAS), which provides support for remote user access.

Setting up a PPTP connection can be a daunting task for the average user, and often necessitates a call to a user company's help desk, says Spencer. The idea is to make establishing a VPN connection to NT over the Internet using PPTP as simple as a single mouse click through a client-side tool called Connection Manager, according to Spencer. Microsoft sees that as an opportunity to reduce the total cost of ownership for NT-based networks by reducing calls to technical support in order to set up VPN connections.

One issue, however, is whether VPN performance over the Internet will be good enough. "I'm kind of curious to see if they've figured out that aspect of it and how they are going to handle that capacity," says Texas user Pargmann. "We can add more [modem] ports [onto the corporate network], but on the Internet, it's not that easy." Still, Pargmann sees BaseCamp as a way for some user companies to cut the costs associated with supporting branch offices or fixed-location, single-user sites.

Microsoft has not yet decided packaging or pricing for BaseCamp.

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