INDUSTRY

Marconi Corporation plc today announced a new networking device, the MPG-1000, an OC-192c Media and Protocol Gateway that extends the benefits of high-speed encryption to a variety of network interfaces in use over local-area, wide-area and storage-area networks (LAN, WAN and SAN). The MPG-1000 will be demonstrated at the SC2004 High Performance Computing, Networking and Storage Conference in Pittsburgh on November 8 - 11 in the StorCloud booth (#1542) and will be on display at Marconi Federal's booth #1132. "The MPG-1000 Media and Protocol Gateway fills a need in the high-performance computing community by connecting a variety of interfaces to very high-speed, reliable, secure networks, making mission-critical data available worldwide at an instant's notice," said Gerry Kolosvary, president of Marconi Communications Federal, Inc. "The MPG-1000 gives high-performance computing users -- whether they are in the government, research or private industry -- a simple, cost-effective device for transporting their data across the WAN as if locally interconnected through SCSI, Fiber Channel or Infiniband." In addition, by supporting encryption of data traffic at speeds up to OC-192c (10 Gbps) via a variety of network interfaces, Marconi's MPG-1000 ensures that all mission-critical applications -- regardless of transport protocol -- can be secured across LANs, WANs and SANs for defense, intelligence and high-performance computing users, such as cluster, grid or supercomputing. Examples of critical applications might include secure transport of multimedia, such as real-time surveillance video from fixed or mobile cameras or other sensor-derived data; the transport of very large, image-rich data, such as geo-positioning files used in weather forecasting, oil and gas exploration; and defense and intelligence activities. The MPG-1000 will provide 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps Ethernet services over OC-48c and OC-192c transport technologies -- Synchronous Optical Network (SONET), Optical Cross Connect, and Asynchronous Transport Mode (ATM) -- in its initial release, planned for early 2005. In future releases, the platform will support interfaces for Infiniband, Packet over SONET, Fiber Channel, and SMPTE 292M (High-Definition Television). "The MPG-1000 will permit US Government customers to support mission-critical IP services at gigabit speeds by bulk encrypting IP packets, using existing KG75 encryptors over the newest Government networks, including GIG-BE," said Kolosvary.