Subject: Re: new to VPN

From: John Lindal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 16:59:32 -0800

> There are a growing number of VPN capable boxes that employ management
> processors of around 100Mhz, (not ix86) with rather limited power
> budgets. They are using comodity cipher chips with power budgets that
> rival that of the fan on the GHz PIII.  It is these devices where we will
> see the most impact of IPsec technology - they are often embedded network
> elements of various sorts.

AFAIK, the PowerPC chips run much cooler than P3's.  I'm sure custom
hardware can run even cooler, but I suspect that only in extreme
circumstances would it be worth the extra effort.

> But, I agree with Jayant - for anyone for whom money is an object, but
> power consumption is not (anyone not living in California :-]), but
> moderate speed is also, a PIII is very hard to beat.

Does one extra PIII for an office of, say, 50 people, each of whom has at
least one PC on his/her desk, actually make a significant difference in the
power budget?

An end-to-end IPSec solution that offloads all the work to the end clients
would avoid this issue because one would only be using the PC's already on
people's desktops.

--
Sincerely,
John Lindal
Chief Software Architect, Trlokom, Inc.
http://www.trlokom.com/