The new version of the Netilla Security Platform from AEP is release 5.4, into which support for load balancing has been added, though this is an optional extra contained in a dedicated appliance rather than shipping as default on the vanilla NSP.
As such, it is available in two flavours, NSP-LBF for failover configurations, in which case there are two NSPs deployed as an entry-level appliance, and NSP-LBC, a clustered version, with support for up to 10 NSP units in a cluster, supporting installations with up to 15,000 concurrent users. Both configurations are active-active.
The other news on NSP is its support for the PowerTerm WebConnect product from Ericom Software Inc, a competitor to Citrix in what is now being called the application access market, i.e. thin client, terminal services, remote desktop and so on. And of course, Citrix is a competitor to NSP in SSL VPN, so Closter, New Jersey-based Ericom and AEP claim that using the two products together provides the market with a robust, secure and affordable alternative to Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix Access Gateway.
AEP said the integration with Ericom enables access to apps residing on Windows Terminal Servers, IBM mainframes (System p) and midrange (system i), other Unix platforms, Linux, OpenVMS and Tandem.
In a parallel announcement, AEP also unveiled NACpoint, a network access control (NAC) appliance resulting, as it revealed to Computer Business Review in August, from an OEM deal with Lockdown Networks Inc.
AEP mentioned as potential uses the migration of guests, partners, consultants and conference room access from visitors on wires Ethernet connections to separate VLANs for security purposes, or add policy networking to Cisco Aironet environments, i.e. ones running Cisco’s fat APs on the LAN rather than an overlay network with a WLAN switch.
