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Telecom Italia Debuts Internet-based
Virtual Private Network Service

Background

From the peaks of the Alps to the tip of Sicily, Telecom Italia provides local and long-distance telephone services to some 60 million Italians.

Telecom Italia is also the country's largest systems integrator, offering tailor-made, turnkey telecommunications solutions to small, medium and large businesses throughout Italy. The solutions range from simple networks with several low-speed leased lines and switched connections, to massive WANs that support thousands of users over high-speed packet services such as frame relay and ATM.

Over the last few years, Telecom Italia has seen requests for remote networking services skyrocket. Most of these requests come from banks, insurance companies, online service providers and other large organizations that plan to connect remote sites into corporate intranets or offer services such as online banking to customers in geographically dispersed locations.

Application

Providing secure, affordable communications between remote users and corporate networks for applications such as corporate intranets, remote LAN access and home banking.

Current Approach

Expensive long distance dial-up connections or private lines; modem banks and terminal servers.

The Need

To provide Telecom Italia's customers with a new service that:

Lowers the cost of remote networking

Maintains security, manageability and compatibility with existing needs

Allows customers to manage and maintain their own user password files and other access parameters

Supports multiple protocols and duplicate or unregistered IP addresses

Italian Bank - Previous Network

Ascend Solution

The Solution

But the high cost of leased lines and long distance connections have discouraged many companies from implementing these plans. To meet the demand for remote networking at a price that its customers could afford, Telecom Italia decided to offer an Internet-based Virtual Private Network (VPN) service called ArcIPelago. This revolutionary new service uses the infrastructure of the Internet, instead of private lines, as a transport mechanism for establishing secure, point-to-point connections over long distances.

To design and build ArcIPelago, Telecom Italia enlisted the aid of Ascend Communications, the worldwide leader in remote networking solutions and Uniautomation, an Ascend premier VAR. Ascend's MAX 4000 WAN access switches serve as the foundation of the new VPN service.

According to Telecom Italia, Ascend is the only company that could provide the technology to build a successful VPN service. Its winning points were the Ascend Tunnel Management Protocol (ATMP) and Access Control, features of the MAX which provide secure tunneling for customer data and foolproof identification and authentication of an unlimited number of users.

How it Works

The Ascend VPN solution consists of one or more MAX 4000s installed in Telecom Italia's 150 points of presence (POPs) and a MAX 4000 at each VPN subscriber's corporate headquarters. The MAX in each POP contains five digital modem cards, handles 60 simultaneous calls from analog modem users and is connected to the Internet through a 2-Mbps frame relay port. The MAX at a subscriber's corporate headquarters is connected to the Telecom Italia IP backbone via an fractional E1 PPP leased line.

Remote callers such as the home banking customers shown below gain access to their VPN simply by placing a local call to the nearest POP, eliminating any long-distance phone charges. The MAX uses ATMP, an encapsulation protocol developed by Ascend, to establish a temporary "tunnel" between the caller and the MAX at the corporate network. The tunnel ensures the security of the caller's data as it travels across the Internet, and allows the transmission of unregistered and non-unique IP addresses that otherwise could be unacceptable on shared Internet facilities. When the call is terminated, the MAX automatically tears down the tunnel.

To manage VPN users and protect subscribers' network resources, Telecom Italia is using Ascend's network security management system, Access Control. In conjunction with Proxy-RADIUS, an authentication server that resides at a Telecom Italia POP, Access Control serves to identify legitimate VPN callers, perform user authentication and authorization and determine network destinations. It also lets each VPN subscriber maintain local control of their users and customize their own user access profiles.

ArcIPelago is attracting strong interest from corporate customers, who recognize that Internet-based VPNs provide enhanced flexibility and tremendous cost savings over other networking alternatives. A large Italian bank with 15,000 home banking customers is evaluating the service. By the end of the year, Telecom Italia expects the new service, which became operational in February of 1997, to have tens of thousands of subscribers.

To support this influx of subscribers, Telecom Italia plans to install at least 400 MAX 4000s by year's end. To support the additional traffic on its Internet backbone, 180 of these 400 MAXs will be installed for the expansion of the Internet Access Service - TIN (Telecom Italia Network).

Ascend Equipment

400 MAX 4000s

Digital modem cards

Ascend Access Control and Proxy-RADIUS

Ascend Tunnel Management Protocol (ATMP)

The Benefits

Remote users connect to network with local phone calls

Proxy-RADIUS lets customers retain control of password files and access parameters

Digital modems easily swapped for ISDN cards as callers need high-speed digital access over ISDN BRI lines

ATMP enables transmission of packets that would otherwise be unacceptable on the Internet, such as packets that use unregistered IP addresses or IPX packets

High-speed frame relay port on the MAX allows connection to Internet backbone at 2 Mbps

Italian Bank using Telecom Italia's ArcIPelago VPN Service - Ascend Solution

Ascend Solution