REMOTE ACCESS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES HAVE become key elements enabling organizations to remain competitive in the market as well as respond to employee quality of life and environmental issues which are affecting corporations today,” says Jeff Wilson, Director of Access Programs at market research firm Infonetics Research, Inc. On a parallel note, revenue from router (one class of which enables remote access for enterprise) sales worldwide dropped 6% in the second quarter of 2002, to $1.5 billion, with Avici, Cisco, Juniper, and Redback leading in sales, according to Dell’Oro Group’s latest report. High-end router revenue dropped during the quarter, although units shipped remained steady, because increasingly cost-conscious customers shifted from expensive high-speed ports (10 Gbps and 2.5 Gbps) to lower-speed, lower-priced ports (155 Mbps and 10/100 Mbps Ethernet), according to Dell'Oro. Because most of the new features are add-ons, router vendors “will not get people to replace existing equipment; they’re going to wait for extraordinary advances,” although demand for routed circuits at common T1 speeds is still strong, says Dell’Oro Group founder Tam Dell’Oro.

Chipping away at the enterprise class of remote access products is a low-profile company in San Jose, CA. Tasman Networks (erstwhile Tiara Networks) recently tested (by the Tolly Group) its 1004 Router against a bunch of Cisco products, in many categories—price, steady state, zero loss throughput, quality of service (QoS), network address translation and so on, and has come away with flying colors. “To meet a broad range of customer demands at the network edge, service providers need intelligent access and aggregation solutions that deliver affordable high-speed connectivity while maximizing bandwidth capacity over copper and fiber,” says Muthu Muthuraman, Vice president of Engineering and one of the founders. “Our edge routers are proving to be robust upgrade solutions that deliver immediate ROI.”

Tasman’s latest, the multi-scalable T1/E1 router 1004, provides bandwidth from fractional T1 up to four bundled T1/E1s, offering users reliable, high capacity WAN access links. “Users in the small-to-mid-sized offices want simplicity of set up and single box solutions,” says Muthuraman. With the 1004, the user has a high function wide area router. Since a majority of Internet traffic (over 50%) consists of small packet sizes, the capability of the router to sustain a minimum packet size load with zero loss is important. This is possible with the 1004, based on the superior hardware-software architecture that Tasman has built into it, claims Muthuraman.

In many cases, the enterprise’s existing network infrastructure is functional today, but the growing bandwidth demand fueled by new applications, fosters the need for additional networking services. The new services must be implemented without a forklift upgrade. NACT of Utah, a manufacturer of VoIP network gateways and PSTN Class 4 Tandem switches, soft switches and telecommunication billing systems, was shopping for products to upgrade their router and data switch platforms—specifically high speed routers that could deliver more packets without bogging down. After a review of offers from Cisco, 3Com, Nortel and Foundry, it went with the Tasman 1004, preferring its powerful software-based technology. “The upgrade and customization processes are easier and at no cost,” says Parkinson, VP of Engineering at NACT. “The Tasman 1004 provided us with a comprehensive suite of Layer 2 and Layer 3 advanced services.” The suite includes comprehensive IP routing protocols and services, QoS, VLAN tagging and forwarding, and extensive monitoring and diagnostics. “Router services can be activated from a remote location, without the need of costly hardware upgrades or on-site maintenance,” says Muthuraman.

With over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry, Muthuraman is confident that the flexibility and inherent strengths of the Tasman 1004 router will stand up against heavy weight competition. “Legacy hardware upgrades are expensive while fiber connections remain costly and frequently unavailable. Thus, there are limited choices today: settle for a T1 or upgrade to a costly T3 connection,” says Muthuraman. “The Tasman router is a viable solution for the small enterprise.”

Technology advances that address this space have been dramatic in last 3 years. High-performance, high integration silicon is now available for the T1-to-T3 space. More mature, cost-effective multi-link protocols (MLPPP rather than IMA) and inexpensive memory (important for “high functioning” product) render legacy redundant, expensive to upgrade, and frequently loaded with seldom-used software features. At the same time, remote office interconnect is an important problem (the estimated market size spills over $500 million) and remains a challenge for incumbents to solve with their legacy hardware and software architectures.

Muthuraman and his team have carefully focused their strategy towards leveraging today’s silicon to provide intermediate solutions—small, robust and extremely easy on the corporate pocket. Tasman has been conscious about remaining lean, and with some judicious manufacuring planning in place, holds very little inventory, and yet is very flexible to deliver customized solutions to every client.

With the carrier class showing no signs of recovery, and the enterprise tightening belts everyday, Tasman’s salvo seems to be homebound.