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  Remote Access Services (RAS) has long been a part of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT operating system, though it typically has been used only with a handful of ports for quick and dirty remote access. For scalable, stable remote access, you need to integrate standalone servers into your network structure--another device to learn, another user list to manage and another point of failure to worry about.

To view the Report card. Microsoft, however, hasn't been sitting idl e: It's been working on building up RAS and adding new services, such as RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service) support and IP address allocation (see "NT RAS: Ready for Enterprise Remote Access?," page 110). Shops running NT have tremendous intellectual capital invested in administering NT. This familiarity lowers the impact of remote-access support and makes choosing NT as a remote-access solution easy. But does NT RAS make sense for remote access beyond a handful of ports?

Answering that question requires some explanation. Enterprise remote-access servers typically provide detailed reporting and accounting facilities, scalability, fault tolerance and component hot swappability--with varying degrees of success--in addition to reliable, manageable remote access (see "Smokin' Remote Access Pushed to the Max," at www.NetworkComputing.com/ 822/822r2.html). NT provides a framework that supports many features, but without third-party applications that hook into NT (see "Management Additions," page 118), enterprise-caliber reporting and accounting lacks necessary functionality for adequate management. Scalability is a combination of NT's realistic performance capabilities on a given hardware platform and the remote-access vendors' maximum port density. Fault tolerance is tied to the PC architecture containing the hardware and remote-access server. With a minimum of three lines of responsibility, bundling enterprise NT-based remote-access servers is difficult.

Enterprise-Ready? Is Windows NT-based RAS ready for the enterprise? If you don't care about accounting and billing, or if you're willing to purchase third-party accounting and billing packages, the answer is yes. If your user to port ratio is low--like 4:1--and the calling rate is relatively low (users are connected for longer periods), then yes. If your remote-access users can stand long down times while the server is being serviced, then yes again. However, if you need tight integration into a heterogeneous network, modem and protocol debugging tools, component hot-swappability and excellent call handling, you should focus on devices built specifically for remote enterprise remote access.

Vendors are cranking out enterprise-scale solutions designed to compete with standalone devices that have held court in enterprise remote access: Ascend Communications' 4004 (and 4048), Cisco Systems' 5200 and Shiva Corp.'s AccessSwitch line.

One vendor claims it is tackling some of the more pressing needs with an enterprise NT RAS product: 3Com Corp.'s EdgeServer Pro, a dual P-PRO 200-MHz NT server that slides into the vendor's Enterprise Network Hub and handles 256 ports. Unfortunately, 3Com ran into some bugs with the EdgeServer Pro and couldn't submit product in time for this review.