Nokiahas released a network appliance
that uses two quad-coreIntel Xeonprocessors with Intel's I/O
Acceleration Technology to achieve raw processing speeds of 12gbps,
or 5.3gbps with default settings.
The Nokia
IP2450, released last week, is the result of early-stage
collaboration between engineers at Nokia, Intel and Check
Point.
The unit is aimed at network operators who need to maintain
security for corporate firewalls and
virtual private networks at speeds above 1gbps.
Running Check Point's VPN-1 Power and VPN-1 UTM security
applications and the CoreXL core load-balancing software, the unit
will achieve about 1.8gbps with 80% of the malware signatures
switched on.
A Nokia spokesman said the unit costs about £4,000 per gbps
throughput, which is £800 less than the average identified by a
Gartner study of firewall devices.
Adding two high port density cards, which will be released
shortly, will increase firewall throughput to about 20gbps, Nokia
said.
"We are expecting the refreshed platform to have a working life
of at least five years," said David Dorosin, Nokia head of product
marketing for security and mobile connectivity.
The multicore platforms offer throughput rates up to 10 times
higher than uniprocessors, said Dorosin.
However, the trick was to balance the load across the different
cores, and to distribute multiple copies of the security
applications, said Nokia. This required a robust optimised
operating system, in this case Check Point's CoreXL.
The Nokia IP2450 supports multi-core technology and
multiprocessing applications, and allows further expandability and
performance improvements through add-on Nokia Accelerated Data Path
and Ipso OS upgrades.
Many public and private network operators are looking for higher
throughput rates, because applications such as voice over IP, peer
to peer file sharing, and video downloads are driving up traffic
volumes, said Nokia.
At the same time, threats to data are becoming more
sophisticated and targeted, sharpening the need to inspect packet
data more deeply.