Remote access servers must use strong security techniques to keep up with increasingly dispersed infrastructures.

Remote access servers help keep organizations connected, as more and more workers work remotely and need to access company servers quickly, easily and concurrently. Businesses demand high-bandwidth connections, with low latency. But remote access must also include excellent security features, and IT vigilance to watch for risky unsecured remote access endpoints. Remote access servers are usually associated with a firewall for security, but trends in security around these servers point to further use of encryption and strong authentication using one-time password generators, as well as more secure access software.

Remote access servers are often used as part of a virtual private network (VPN), and modern VPNs might be SSL or IPsec types. Organizations have moved away from legacy dial-in servers for remote access, but as equipment configuration becomes more complicated, managed services can become very appealing. Web conferencing signals a growing need for even more available and efficient remote access servers. Management of remote access servers should be increasingly simplified and centralized.

Best-in-Class Remote Access Servers Features:

• Considers and meets the needs of the organization’s mobile users, with a future eye toward mobile remote access to computers and web resources
• Maintains local and remote event logs, access logs and data logs, and supports session management
• Handles a high number of users per server and offers continuous availability and efficiency

Top Considerations before Buying Remote Access Servers Products:

Security around remote access servers continues to evolve. Added encryption, authentication and thin client or remote control, rather than remote access, software can add security features to protect data and devices at endpoints. Integrated remote management can add simplicity, as does a centrally controlled management location for servers. Chief among remote server access goals is maintaining the availability of servers in increasingly dispersed infrastructures, with growing data volumes, bandwidth-intensive content and remote workers. Remote servers may see a future where everything, including client software, resides on the remove server.

Key Products

1. Patton Electronics Co. designs, develops, and manufactures electronic communications equipment for network access, connectivity, voice-over-IP, video surveillance and triple play. Patton offers more than a thousand products, including SmartNode VoIP solutions for analog and ISDN telephony, Visuality mobile-video surveillance, collection, and intelligence distribution solutions, ForeFront multi-service access infrastructure solutions for TDM and IP service delivery, IPLink CPE solutions for last-mile/local-loop access, CopperLink Ethernet Extenders, EtherBITS device servers, EnviroNET hardened networking equipment, and a full range of network-connectivity tools like interface converters, short-range modems, multiplexers and surge protectors.

2. E-Band Communications Corporation designs and manufactures multi-gigabit capacity wireless communication systems based on 71-86 GHz millimeter-wave radio technology. E-Band aims to solve last-mile access bottleneck problems, connect enterprises to fiber networks, and enable backhaul of mobile (3G/4G) and fixed wireless (WiFi, WiMax) networks. Their Wireless GigE technology lets business owners install private data transport networks without having to install fiber.

3. Performance Technologies is a supplier of integrated IP-based platforms and solutions for advanced communications networks and computer system architectures. Their Embedded Systems Group offers application-ready platforms that incorporate open-standards based software and hardware. Performance Technology’s Signaling Systems Group offers the SEGway product suite, which includes IP STPs, SS7 over IP transport solutions, and signaling gateways that use IP networks. They also provide pre-integrated, application-ready systems and servers.

4. Aptilo Networks provides integrated management solutions for control of billing, user services and access in WiMAX and Wi-Fi networks. Their Guest Internet Access allows customers, business partners and key stakeholders to use wireless technology to access their corporate resources securely from customers’ offices. It employs redundant pairs of the Aptilo Access Controller at the regional breakout points to the Internet, and smaller access controllers at the local offices outside the WAN to connect them to the corporate office, all managed from a central point. 

5. COMTREND supplies broadband equipment that embeds ADSL, ADSL2+, Bonded ADSL2+, VDSL2 and GPON technologies to support triple-play voice, video and data applications including IP-Video, VoIP, WiFi and industry standard QoS with VLAN traffic assignment and more. Their CT-ACS TR-069 Auto-configuration Server can automatically configure to the TR-069 standard and performs other service functions. Recent product releases include NexusLink bonded routers and wireless video adapters. 
 
Remote Access Servers
Definition: A remote access server is the computer and associated software that is set up to handle users seeking access to network remotely. Sometimes called a communication server, a remote access server usually includes or is associated with a firewall server to ensure security and a router that can forward the remote access request to another part of the corporate network. A remote access server may include or work with a modem pool manager so that a small group of modems can be shared among a large number of intermittently present remote access users. The remote access server allows users to gain access to files and print services on the LAN from a remote location.