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April 5, 1999

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Perfect Partners

DSL and VPNs let users overcome cost and speed problems

By Mary E. Thyfault

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SL and VPNs are the odd couple of the networking world: The two technologies don't need each other, but they make perfect partners.

Together, digital subscriber lines and virtual private networks overcome the twin evils of remote networking: slow speeds and high costs. They let remote workers in branch offices and telecommuters at home feel as if they were sitting in corporate headquarters, connected directly to the company LAN.

DSL services let remote workers access a company's networks and the Internet over the existing copper telephone network at speeds as high as 7 Mbps. At the same time, VPN users can connect to corporate networks by placing an inexpensive local call to an Internet node, and send or receive data through an encrypted tunnel. That's especially important for companies that have workers scattered around the world, because VPNs can cut international telecom costs by as much as 90%. They also can cut remote-access costs by 30% to 70%, according TeleChoice, a research firm.

Only about 20% of companies with wide area networks use VPNs today, but that number should increase to 55% by the end of next year, according to TeleChoice. Of those planning to use VPNs, about 34% say they will implement VPNs to let employees remotely access a corporate network. Another 30% plan to use VPNs to create intranets to connect corporate users over the public Internet or another IP-based backbone network, according to a TeleChoice survey of IT managers who plan to implement VPNs in the next year. The survey also indicates that about 20% expect to use VPNs to link up with trading partners over an extranet.

DSL isn't needed to connect into a VPN; any communications link will work. But users, carriers, and equipment vendors say the two technologies are driving deployment of each other.

"VPNs will be a major driver for getting DSL out there," says Gavin Young, chairman of the technical committee of the ADSL Forum in Fremont, Calif.

"Only DSL can offer the price/ performance and the sheer bandwidth needed to support the full-featured VPNs of tomorrow," says TeleChoice analyst Eric Zines.

VPNs and DSL are still infant technologies taking their first steps in the highly competitive networking world. But users, carriers, and, equipment vendors say that as the two mature, they will end up married into a packaged service offering--and possibly even into a single DSL/VPN box located at either the customer's site or the telephone company switching office.

New Way To Work
"VPNs and DSL will change the way people work," says Warren Clifford, MIS coordinator for Computer Media Technologies, a CD-ROM duplicating company in Sunnyvale, Calif. "Many of our sales people live in and call on customers in San Francisco. With DSL and a VPN, they'll be able work at home and never have to come into the office. They'll be able to access and replicate a 10-Mbyte customer database file just as if they are in the office. With DSL, they could copy the file in just a few minutes instead of close to an hour."

Computer Media already uses a DSL connection that runs at 1.1 Mbps in both directions to connect to a VPN provided by Concentric Network Corp. The company downloads large software files over that line, then places the files on CD-ROMs for its customers to sell. Computer Media pays about $400 a month for the 1.1-Mbps connection--substantially less than the $750 a month it paid for a 128-Kbps frame relay connection. "The bandwidth is comparable to a T1, but we're paying less than we did for a 128 Kbps," says Clifford.

Improved Productivity
Together, DSL and VPNs can improve the productivity of workers. That's the experience of Yaskawa Bay Area Development Center, a San Francisco subsidiary of Yaskawa Electric Co. of Japan, which is in the motion- and drive-control business. Yaskawa just implemented a VPN from carrier Brainstorm Networks that includes 1.04 Mbps symmetric DSL connections from NorthPoint Communications Inc. The high-speed DSL link lets Yaskawa developers connect to the network more quickly, and the VPN lets them more easily and efficiently collaborate on projects with other workers around the globe.

"By doing this, we've probably cut our design time by 20% to 50%," says Raja Kadiyala, development manager for Yaskawa Electric America Inc. "With DSL, we're actually able to do multilocation and multi-national product design, sharing information in a timely fashion between sites 24 hours a day." The company also is saving money, paying about $90 less per month than it was paying for a 128-Kbps ISDN connection.

In addition, Yaskawa is saving more money by cutting international travel by at least two trips per year and by reducing its use of international phone, fax, and courier services. Yaskawa also is considering connecting home users to the business VPN via DSL. "It will allow our employees some flexibility," says Kadiyala.

For now, many enterprises are starting with either VPN or DSL and plan to add the other in the near future. For example, Silicon Graphics Inc. last summer began providing employees with Rhythms NetConnections Inc.'s DSL service, which lets them connect to Silicon Graphics' corporate network at speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps downstream and 680 Kbps upstream, or at 1.1 Mbps in each direction.

"At Silicon Graphics, people tend to work all the time," says Guillermo Diaz, director of enterprise network services for the Mountain View, Calif., company. "When they leave, they go home to work. And many of them have a lot of big bandwidth requirements. Most of them are engineers creating new products or designing new systems. They're doing pretty big file downloads or doing tests over the network."