When did the term “concentrator” become dated? Now that I think about it does anyone actually use this term still to talk about a VPN device?
VPN concentrators is a legacy term from back when hardware was less powerful, there were less dedicated crypto asics and firewalls lacked the manageability and throughput of what they do now.
Typically modern firewalls don’t have an issue processing thousands of VPN clients alongside their role as a network edge equipment.
There are a few exceptions for PCI (security) reasons where in order to provide further isolation you may use a firewall for brokering your VPN traffic. However it’s very rare that you have a dedicated VPN device anymore.
The Meraki implementation is a bit different. It’s more of a lan extension service rather than VPN as to my memory it is only used for site to site services between MX appliances.
I use VPN concentrators to connect all my remote networks. It is just a device that all my other devices connect to for a secure connection. I don’t think it is dated, still relevant for many applications. That is the only function of the device, so i call it a vpn concentrator.
First heard the term about 10 years ago in regards to Cisco’s 3000 Series VPN concentrator. I think it’s still a term used if Meraki is anything to go buy since you can configure their MX firewall in VPN concentrator mode. With that said, I’m not sure why you needed to create a post on here for this.
Nope, only old vendor docs use that term. I’ve never heard people IRL say it.
Client is asking for a “concentrator” and is dead set on the marketing. Curious if there is something to get them to shut up.
I’m guessing. I’ve always used some combo VPN/firewall/router device even at the enterprise level.
They just need a device that can terminate multiple VPN connections and can handle their traffic loads. I think of the term concentrator as synonymous with the terms VPN Hub or VPN aggregator, for example, using Cisco 3900 ISR Routers or Meraki MX firewalls to aggregate VPN services. Ideally, in my opinion, a good concentrator should handle encryption in hardware rather than software via the use of crypto accelerators like a Cisco ISM module for 3800 series Routers.
I think it was the whole “smaller code base” on a concentrator = more secure they were after.