AIUI the thing also has massive remote administration capabilities - I cant check for myself at the moment because at least from here the site is comprehensively slashdotted.
And I was envisaging this thing *being* the VPN'er - an OS independant jobbie that will work with our MACheads, our UltraSparcers and our i86ers on a completely uniform platform sounds dreamy. As long is it appears on a PCI slot as an ethernet card all is gutt.;)
You wouldnt believe how badly people can screw their home PC's, and the grief a software solution that absolutely must run interuptted to provide secure connectivity can have. Equally, you wouldnt believe the grief you'd have trying to convince 15000 techno luddites who just want their market data/portfolio/email/real broadcast/etc that they should be using linux.
Or the tecno ubergeeks who are damned if they're developing ona linux box instead of their sparc.
etc.
*shrug*. One mans pain is anothers gain, an all that...
I work as a security architect/consultant for a pretty major bank - let me give you a potentially major advantage of this kind of system.
Cost.
When we talk about providing VPNed telecommuting connections to home systems, or physical token based identification for tens of thousands of employees then a cost differential of even 5 dollars can be a huge cash saving and make or break a project.
Now, lets say (and this *is* genuinely hypothetical) that we want a major home working rollout but are unhappy with software based "personal firewalls", and so forth. If these cards are reasonably cheap when bought in bulk we can give them to all staff who need to telework to plug into their systems, regardless of system spec or connection method, and perform the VPN'ing from the card which requires the card to be in and enabled for connectivity.
We save ourselves the cost of dedicated dialup facilities, of standalone firewalls, of buggy or circumventable software. (buggy and circumventable firmware is another issue...;) )
Shrug. I'm not saying we use it, or plan to, but... there are reasons this sort of stuff can be interesting to people, even if its not immediately apparent to the uber-home-networking crowd...
(yah,yah. My home nets got an OpenBSD firewall, a sparc 20 and NFR. But I am not normal. and thats a fact.;) )
Slashdot Mirror
AIUI the thing also has massive remote administration capabilities - I cant check for myself at the moment because at least from here the site is comprehensively slashdotted. And I was envisaging this thing *being* the VPN'er - an OS independant jobbie that will work with our MACheads, our UltraSparcers and our i86ers on a completely uniform platform sounds dreamy. As long is it appears on a PCI slot as an ethernet card all is gutt. ;)
You wouldnt believe how badly people can screw their home PC's, and the grief a software solution that absolutely must run interuptted to provide secure connectivity can have. Equally, you wouldnt believe the grief you'd have trying to convince 15000 techno luddites who just want their market data/portfolio/email/real broadcast/etc that they should be using linux.
Or the tecno ubergeeks who are damned if they're developing ona linux box instead of their sparc.
etc.
*shrug*. One mans pain is anothers gain, an all that...
I work as a security architect/consultant for a pretty major bank - let me give you a potentially major advantage of this kind of system.
Cost.
When we talk about providing VPNed telecommuting connections to home systems, or physical token based identification for tens of thousands of employees then a cost differential of even 5 dollars can be a huge cash saving and make or break a project.
Now, lets say (and this *is* genuinely hypothetical) that we want a major home working rollout but are unhappy with software based "personal firewalls", and so forth. If these cards are reasonably cheap when bought in bulk we can give them to all staff who need to telework to plug into their systems, regardless of system spec or connection method, and perform the VPN'ing from the card which requires the card to be in and enabled for connectivity.
We save ourselves the cost of dedicated dialup facilities, of standalone firewalls, of buggy or circumventable software. (buggy and circumventable firmware is another issue ... ;) )
Shrug. I'm not saying we use it, or plan to, but... there are reasons this sort of stuff can be interesting to people, even if its not immediately apparent to the uber-home-networking crowd...
(yah,yah. My home nets got an OpenBSD firewall, a sparc 20 and NFR. But I am not normal. and thats a fact. ;) )
cheers.