Mountain View, Calif. (March 27, 1995) -- Netscape Communications Corporation today announced Netscape News Server and Netscape Proxy Server, two additions to the company's popular server software family that bring enhanced communications capabilities to users on corporate networks. Netscape News Server, the first secure news server for the Internet and private TCP/IP networks, enables organizations to create and maintain private or public discussion groups. Netscape Proxy Server is a high-performance caching proxy server that brings increased speed and security to corporate users accessing the Internet through a firewall or a low-bandwidth network link.
The two servers are part of a full suite of new software products from Netscape Communications. The company also announced today the 1.1 versions of its popular Netscape Communications Server and Netscape Commerce Server software, as well as a new family of Netscape Internet Applications for electronic commerce. Taken together, these new products dramatically broaden Netscape's open software solutions for exchanging information and conducting commerce on global networks.
"Netscape News Server and Netscape Proxy Server deliver new communications and security capabilities to the many companies and organizations using the Internet or private TCP/IP based networks for internal and external information exchange," said Marc Andreessen, vice president of technology at Netscape Communications. "The extended Netscape server family now enables organizations to provide new and secure forums for communication, to increase the security of networked communications, and to speed information access for users retrieving information across the Internet and across the enterprise."
Netscape News Server and Netscape Proxy Server incorporate the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) open protocol for Internet security. SSL is application protocol-independent and provides encryption, which creates a secured channel to prevent others from tapping into the network; authentication, which uses certificates and digital signatures to verify the identity of parties in information exchanges and transactions; and message integrity, which ensures that messages cannot be altered en route.
Netscape News Server enables companies to create their own public and private discussion groups for information exchange between employees, customers, or any other audience. Because Netscape News Server incorporates SSL, users can for the first time create secure forums for confidential or proprietary information. Netscape News Server uses the industry-standard Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) for reading, posting, and replicating news articles. Fully compatible with the public Usenet public news group system on the Internet, the server can also accept public news group feeds. Like all Netscape servers, Netscape News Server offers easy installation, configuration and maintenance using the graphics and forms capability of the Netscape Navigator client.
Netscape Proxy Server provides secure Internet access and increased performance for corporate users behind a firewall. The server provides high-speed caching of information which reduces the overall network load and increases response times for corporate users requesting previously accessed data from the Internet -- reducing the cost of the company's link to the Internet. Netscape Proxy Server provides transaction logging and can be used to screen outbound network accesses, restricting various users or access to certain information on the Internet.
Netscape News and Proxy Servers are scheduled for release in April for popular UNIX-based platforms. The servers are each priced at $2,495.