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Thank you for your interest in joining the Virtual Private Network Consortium, better known as VPNC. VPNC is the trade association for the international VPN vendor community. The VPNC has been in existence since 1999 and our membership is continually growing.

Purposes for VPNC

The primary purposes of the VPNC are:

• Promote the products of its members to the press and to potential customers
• Increase interoperability between members to help them better serve their potential customers
• Serve as the forum for the VPN manufacturers throughout the world
• Help the press and potential customers understand VPN technologies and standards

Benefits of Membership

The tangible benefits of VPNC membership include:

• Members receive significant exposure by being included on multiple pages of the VPNC website, which averages over 100,000 visits per week. These pages include:
  • Members' List with direct links to the product information on members' sites.
  • Technical Features list for members' products. This will allow the press, when writing on a particular feature or set of features, to find which members' products to describe.
  • Interoperability Testing page which lists which products, including version, have passed each test, the testing criteria and the specific setup for the listed product so that successful results can be duplicated by customers.
  • Technical White Papers which give members the opportunity to educate the larger VPN community about their specific technologies.
• Low cost interoperability testing for our IPsec and SSL members. There is a one-time only lab fee of $1,000 per product/product line. This is for the life of your product and includes tests we currently offer as well as ones we will add in the future. We also encourage our members to retest new revisions to better serve the VPN buying community, and there are no additional fees. This testing is optional but is only available to members.
• Active marketing outreach to the press and VPN community, which includes prospective customers, to communicate the successful interoperability testing results. Members' products are included on the VPNC website testing pages with detailed information; results for testing and re-testing are announced in the VPNC monthly electronic newsletter, the VPNC Update.
• Testing certification logos for products that successfully complete any of the interoperability tests. Members are welcome to use these logos to support their own marketing strategies (e.g., website, product literature, etc.) for as long as the company remains in the VPNC.
• Additional marketing exposure with inclusion in the VPNC Update, a monthly electronic newsletter which is distributed to a targeted audience including the security press, IT managers and other VPN-related companies. As mentioned above, we announce successful testing and re-testing results. We also include relevant press releases that our members issue each month with a link directly to the member's site.
• Discussions among the members of topics such as how to classify the different types of VPNs, what kind of interoperability certification should be available in the VPN market, and other industry-specific issues.

In addition to the member-specific, tangible benefits, VPNC will offer many services to the general Internet community which can be thought of as intangible benefits for members. These include:

• Logistics support for VPN interoperability events, such as mailing lists and announcements on the VPNC web pages.
• Support for the IETF technical work, such as a better archive for the IPsec mailing list.
• Content on the VPNC web site which helps the press and potential customers understand the features of VPNs, particularly technical issues. In addition to creating this content ourselves, we can point to other web sites (particularly those of the trade press) that contain good articles and other material.
• Paul Hoffman, the VPNC director, has regular conversations with the security press writing about VPN-related issues. He also attends conferences, gives presentations and participates on panels throughout the year.

Member Companies

Membership in VPNC is limited to companies in the VPN market. This includes hardware manufacturers, software manufacturers, and service providers of the protocols supported as VPNs by VPNC: IPsec, L2TP under IPsec, SSL-based VPNs, and MPLS-based VPNs. VPNC is a nonprofit (501(c)(6)) corporation.

Logistics

Membership dues are $4,000 per year per company. Each company has at least two representatives, one responsible for marketing communications, the other for technical communications. You are welcome to designate separate marketing and technical contacts for the IPsec, MPLS, and SSL aspects of your company. Anyone working for a member company can be on any VPNC members-only mailing list.

VPNC offers a low cost interoperability testing program to our IPsec and SSL members. Certification logos are available once a product successfully completes any of the tests. There is a one-time lab fee of $1,000 per product/product line tested. This is for the life of the product and includes any additional tests that will be added to the testing lab in the future as well as re-testing for subsequent revisions, which we encourage our members to do. It should be noted that the list of products which interoperate continues to grow as we test each product that is currently in the VPNC lab with every new product that is added.

Your Next Step

All VPN vendors are invited to join VPNC by filling out the membership form and mailing it along with payment to the VPNC.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Paul Hoffman by email or by telephone at +1 831-426-9827.