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  You wouldn't want to play baseball outdoors in Minnesota in February, but at the right time and place--a warm summer night, on grass and in a cozy venue--the game is a perfect fit. Like baseball, Novell's BorderManager isn't the right product for all times and places, but in its intended environment it shines.

BorderManager is a suite of networking software, some old and some new, unified by the theme of providing secure border services across two networks. The suite includes firewall services, the Novell IP Gateway, VPN (virtual private network) services, Novell Internet Access Server 4.1 and proxy cache services. A run-time version of Intra netWare 4.11 is included as well. The border that BorderManager secures can be anywhere on the network, within your existing LAN, between your LAN and a WAN, or between your LAN and the Internet.

To view the Report card. BorderManager could play some role in almost any IT shop because of the variety of services included in the package. However, large shops with mature IP infrastructures based on existing Unix technologies are a poorer fit for BorderManager than small NetWare shops that are considering Internet connectivity for the first time. And companies without significant Unix systems administration experience that need firewall services should concentrate on products that wouldn't add to the total cost of ownership by requiring additional system administration overhead. Windows NT shops should look at the numerous NT-based products; BorderManager is only for NetWare.

L ike all of the new products coming from Novell, BorderManager leverages NDS, especially in the area of access control. Unless NDS is important to your organization, the full-blown BorderManager package won't be a good fit. Any shop that requires IPX packet filtering, however, will want to give BorderManager a close look because most Unix-based or proprietary firewall products include support only for IP packet filtering.

We tested BorderManager in Network Computing's Syracuse University lab on a Pentium Pro 200 with 128 MB of RAM. We used two 3Com Corp. 3C905 10/100 network interface cards, one connected to a 10-Mbps public network, the other to a private network. When setting up your system, allow a generous amount of space for proxy cache services and any logs you want to keep of BorderManager's operations.

In the On-Deck Circle BorderManager installation is accomplished through the standard product installation mechanisms included with NetWare. We found you need a good background in NetWare c onfiguration and IP services to make it through the process. Because the BorderManager server will sit at the border between two networks, you also need two network adapters--one connected to each network--up and running before installing BorderManager.

You'll be ahead of the game if you have TCP/IP properly set up on each network interface card as well. Your choice of interface card is very important because BorderManager's primary functions are based on network performance. Novell recommends using an intelligent adapter, such as Intel Corp.'s EtherExpress PRO/100 Server Adapter, to off-load much of the work normally placed on the system's processor by nonintelligent adapters.