It starts... iPad Network Connect Anyone?

[plago_]

Over the weekend several bleeding edge, Apple fanatic 'techies' went out and purchased iPad devices. These large screen iTouch'es have inspired most of them to ask me for a Network Connect product that runs on their iPad. That I know of, there is not such software available. This question is for Juniper... any plans on creating a Juniper NC product for Apple i-'devices'. While I'm at it how about Android? I've had 4 of those recently as well. Thank you

[rvi_]

nc is not qualified for ipad currently. You need to follow up with your account team and engage product management

[cbarcellos_]

It isn't qualified, but you could try to see if ActiveSync worked for email. Since it does work with the iPhone, I would assume it would also work on the iPad since the OS is the same or similar.

[Mrkool_]

Juniper may or may not come out with a solution but just like Linux flavors Juniper does not support everyrthing out there so i would not expect themn to support all mobile platforms either. If this is going to be an ongoing thing look at a company called Good technology they support almost all mobile platforms and do encryption of corporate data on the device while leaving your personal data on the non encrypted side for easy sharing pretty cool stuff

[plago_]

Activesync does work just like standard iPod's but this user was hoping to perform poweruser tasks (i.e. remote desktop and ssh sessions) over VPN. The main reason I push for standardizing on our Juniper devices is platform support. It beats all the other solutions as far as flexibility is concerned, For me, mobile device support has been a small issue I've ignored. Unfortunately mobile devices are growing in popularity, becoming more powerful, have faster connection speeds, and are generally to a point where they can be used in place of standard PC's. This is the trend I'm seeing and the iPad is the best example of this. I'm not a huge fan of the iPad product to be honest but I cant ignore the business need and fact they will become a key device in our computing environment along with other platforms such as the Android which is available with similar specs. Moreover, the iPad device ships with a Cisco VPN client along with PPTP and LT2P support. If Cisco can make a client for the iPad and see the obvious change in mobile computing devices shouldn't Juniper as well? Juniper please refocus some of the development efforts on mobile computing. I believe this will slowly become a significant computing platform in future mobile workforces. Thank you.

[cbarcellos_]

plago,

These are good points; thanks for bringing them up.

I'd reccomend contacting your SE so that they can inform the product managers (via feature request). This is how they gauge which features are the biggest priority for the customer base.

[rcallanan_]

Speaking specifically about Network Connect and Apple's "i" devices, I can't imagine how they could possibly make a functioning vpn client. Something that deals specifically with the web portal is far more likely in my opinion. If you look at other iPhone/iTouch/iPad VPN apps, none of them are true VPN connections. Fortinet's is a dumbed-down version of its web portal as well.

The major hangup would likely be the fact that none of the "i" devices allow multitasking. So even if they could create such an app, as soon as you try and back out of the "VPN app" window, there goes your connection!

Like I said though, perhaps they can do something with an app for the web portal. But you're looking specifically for the Network Connect client, and given the limited API that apps are given, I can't see how this could be done.

[plago_]

I know nothing about how the current VPN solutions available on the iPad are coded but I doubt highly that they would include this functionality so that you connect and then immediately disconnect. Point is, this most likely acts like another network connection on the 'i' device rather than an application which doesnt allow multi-tasking as you noted.

[rcallanan_]

I didn't realize that the iPad/iPhone allowed additional network connections, so yeah perhaps that is a possibility.

On a related note, apparently Apple announced multitasking support in it's OS 4 for iDevices this morning so perhaps Juniper will have more options in the near future.

[rcallanan_]

And strangely enough, as part of their OS 4 announcement for iPhone/iPod Touch, they're claiming "Cisco and Juniper SSL VPN support." It'll be interesting to see what they mean by that.