Nortel policy mgmt. as easy as 1,2,3

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. - Nortel Networks last week divulged its product roadmap for allowing network administrators to define, distribute and enforce policies for granting network service levels to users.

The company unveiled Optivity Policy Services, three policy management applications that help users establish guidelines for guaranteeing traffic priority, switch security and service levels in enterprise networks. Optivity Policy Services, set to be delivered in 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 versions, is the embodiment of a strategy outlined by Nortel last summer.

"Having that extra level of control is important to us," says Nortel switch user Mike Kusunoki, network manager at the University of California, Los Angeles' Anderson Graduate School of Management. "Yet you are adding an extra level of complexity. We're hoping that this extra level of complexity does help our bottom line in terms of how many hours we have to spend administering [the network]."

Optivity Policy Services 1.0 enables users to prioritize applications. It runs on Unix and Windows NT systems and combines IP address management capabilities with a Java-based policy configuration interface and a policy server.

From a template in the Java interface, a network administrator can define network bandwidth priority policies by marking the type-of-service field in the IP headers of applications. These policies are stored in a directory database and downloaded onto network devices via the Common Open Policy Service (COPS) protocol.

COPS is supported on Nortel routers running BayRS 13.20. Optivity Policy Services can also download policies into Cisco IOS 11.0 devices by emulating the IOS command-line interface, Nortel officials say. Later this year, Nortel will add its Accelar and Passport switches to the COPS mix.

Optivity Policy Services 2.0 adds switch security to the policy management portfolio. The software lets users establish network access policies based on user authentication information.

When users boot up their PCs, Optivity Policy Services 2.0 initiates an Extensible Authentication Protocol session with a Nortel switch. The switch then passes the authentication request to a policy server along with the switch ID, and the port and media access control address of the user.

The policy server then interacts with an authentication server to process the authentication request, and grant network access, quality-of-service configuration and virtual LAN membership to the user.

Optivity Policy Services 3.0 adds policy-based service management. It works with many other Optivity applications, such as Service Management, Reporting and the base discovery, event and topology service package, to let users define and enforce service-level policies in converged voice and data networks.

The new applications cost $25,000 each. Version 1.0 will be available in July; Version 2.0 in the fourth quarter; and Version 3.0 in the third quarter of 2000.

Nortel: (408) 988-2400