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October 27, 1997, Section: News & Analysis

Securing The Branch Office -- Cisco offers low-cost access router, new software-based firewall

By Salvatore Salamone

IT managers responsible for connecting small offices often must compromise. They can either pay a lot for security features bundled with higher performance access routers or curtail some types of connectivity because of inadequate security.

Cisco is trying to simplify matters. Last week, the company introduced the 1605-R, the latest in Cisco's line of access routers aimed at small offices.

Previous products in the 1600 line of access routers have had two WAN ports and one Ethernet port. The 1605-R offers two Ethernet ports and a WAN interface card slot, which supports different WAN services.

Cisco also announced the IOS Firewall Feature Set, an optional software bundle with firewall and access control features for the 1600 and 2500 router lines.

A common way to use the 1605-R would be to attach a Web server to one Ethernet port and use the other port and the firewall features to connect users in the site. The WAN port would connect the site to an Internet service provider.

In this way, customers could, for example, freely access a public Web site maintained on a Web server through the Internet connection. And users in the office could easily access the Internet while having their portion of the network safeguarded from outside intrusion.

"This is a common scenario for us," said Raymond Williams, a network administrator at RollTech Inc., a plastics component manufacturer in Chicago. "We have regional offices that maintain their own home pages on-site, and we want that information available to everyone. But we also have information on our intranet that is not for outsiders."

The IOS Firewall Feature Set allows managers to secure the intranet or corporate LAN portion of a site's network. Specifically, the security software offers real-time alerts when it detects an attack on the network; an audit trail and transaction log that gives managers information about network bandwidth usage and unauthorized activities; a Java blocking mechanism to prevent the downloading of malicious applets; and context-based access control.

Cisco offers the IOS Firewall Feature Set separately from its other firewall products such as the PIX Firewall and the Windows-NT Centri Firewall server. The IOS Firewall Feature Set can be used in conjunction with existing IOS security and performance enhancing features such as access control lists, DES encryption, Virtual Private Dialup Network tunneling using the Layer 2 Forwarding Protocol, Priority Queuing and Resource Reservation Protocol.

The 1605-R is available at a starting price of $1,495. ISDN leased-line and 56/64-Kbps CSU/DSU WAN interface cards also are available starting at $500 and $700, respectively. The IOS firewall software will be available in January for $700.