Description The industry-leading Contivity Extranet Switch 2000 offers all of the mission-critical features needed to meet the challenges of high-performance, scalable and secure extranets. The Contivity Extranet Switch integrates all of the necessary extranet technologies into a single platform - routing, firewall, bandwidth management, encryption, authentication, and data integrity for secured tunneling across the Internet. Built upon LDAP, the directory-enabled architecture allows the Contivity Extranet Switch to determine what level of performance, access, and security each user should have, based on profiles that define the predetermined needs of the users. This allows your extranet to be tailored to address the requirements and profiles of a wide range of business partners and remote users. An extranet is most often thought of as being used exclusively for remote access. However, as companies look to maximize their Internet investments, there is a growing demand to support both mobile users and branch offices. Although the Contivity Extranet Switch 2000 is typically installed at the central site, it can also be deployed at branch offices. Using an Internet Protocol Security (IPSec)-based LAN-to-LAN extranet connection, branch offices are provided with the same high level of security as mobile users. Whether at the central site or branch office (behind an existing router or connected directly to the Internet), the Contivity Extranet Switch 2000 provides the functionality, performance, and security required for a successful and secure extranet. Compared to building traditional private networks, using the Internet can offer significant cost savings. The network infrastructure (i.e., the Internet) is already built - your traffic is merely transported over that infrastructure. The Contivity Extranet Switch 2000 allows you to fully leverage this cost advantage by providing a secure extranet capability at both the central site and the branch office.
