Positive Networks?

[analogia22]

I am not content with the current VPN I have in place for my company. I came across Positive Networks

http://www.positivenetworks.com

on the internet and wanted to know if anyone has any experience with them.

 

[varget]

I am also looking at Positive Networks and wonder if you had gotten any information feedback from anyone. I went through a demo with their sales/tech staff and it was great. Have not signed on or anything yet.

 

[analogia22]

No, I haven't heard anything. Though I haven't looked into them any further I'm still very interested and would love to hear more about your demo. I may do a demo in the future but just don't have the time right now.

Did they say what their prices are like?

 

[varget]

The demo cleared up a few things. I did not have time either but they kept calling me so finally i said ok. Very good demo. Glad I did it. The have a fixed price based on number of users of which I am looking at the 250 user license. It is $750 per month. Has a $4900 install with a 1 year contract. The other pricing is monthly at $12 per user. We have about 150 users right now and expect to grow it. Right now we use a cisco concentrator with cisco client software. My problem is checking pc's for up to date software etc. They also want to have home users start accessing the network and you know how much of a nightmare that is. This solution would solve that. How are you all doing remote access?

 

[analogia22]

We are using a 3Com SuperStack Firewall. I have like 15 remote users using the SafeNet IPSec VPN client. The way its setup right now doesn't give them a local IP address on the network and so there's no DNS resolution only WINS (after they manually edit their local machine's TCP/IP properties). It works but is a real pain without DNS not to mention user authentication.
I probably am not using the 3Com as I should be but over all I'm not impressed.
You said that Positive Networks wants almost $5k to get in the door...WOW! that's pretty steep. I'll still check them out when I have time but that will be a hard sell to the higher-ups who make the final call here.

 

[varget]

They do have other contract types. They have a small business one which might fit you. I was not sure how many users you had. You will need to contact them on the small business contract. I try to stay with cisco whenever I can. It is more expensive but it always works and has great tech support. I have my clients connecting to a cisco vpn 3005.

 

[analogia22]

My experience with Cisco is very limited and I've never used any of thier VPN products.

Can you use DHCP via VPN with the Cisco VPN 3005?
I want users to get an IP address on the network and use internal DNS.

Is the VPN client user friendly and dummy proof for non-techy users in a Windows 2000/XP environment?

Because the Cisco VPN 3005 uses software encryption does that slow things down?
Would it be better to get one of the higher models (like the 3030) that use hardware encryption?

A friend of mine told me that Cisco recently was comprimised and thier source code was leaked. If that's true is Cisco still as secure as they used to be?

And last but not least, what is the learning curve on administrating it?
Remember my Cisco experience is very limited.

Thanks so much for all of your input.

 

[varget]

You can use dhcp with the vpn and setup an address pool just for them so they can be on a different subnet if you want. It will also use internal dns and can be authenicated by your NT servers. Works perfect in win2000 or xp. The encryption makes no noticeable difference. The learning curve is not bad espcially since you can call cisco tech support and they will pretty well walk you through the whole setup. Documentation is great also. The concentrators also have SSL VPN now so you can use that additionally if you dont want to deploy the client portion to remote users. With ssl you can access files on your network, email, run applications and all from an internet browser. Cool stuff - that means you could be anywhere and jump on someones computer and pull files from your network. Very secure. Cisco is probably one of the best in security.

I have another web demo today with Steve Mogul at Positive Networks. He would be glad to do one for you. His number is 614-855-8490.