INTERCONNECTS

Foundry Networks today announced a new version of the TrafficWorks OS for Foundry's ServerIron 450/850 and GT E-Series application switches to deliver high-performance and high-availability load balancing for network security equipment. TrafficWorks Firewall Load Balancing (FWLB) allows users to scale the capacity of their security systems and maintain high-availability at the most critical points in the network. The ServerIron traffic management switches feature 3rd generation network processor technology to deliver scalable performance up to multi-gigabit speeds for even the most demanding Enterprise, Service Provider and E-Commerce customers. The ServerIron products feature a number of security capabilities that provide a layer of protection for the security devices themselves. In particular, ServerIron's hardware-based SYN-Guard technology protects security devices from denial of service (DOS) and distributed DOS attacks up to multi-gigabit rates. With the increasing number and ferocity of security threats, network operators are relying on a growing number of security devices to protect their network. This increased dependence requires the solution to scale to accommodate network growth and be resilient in the event of network failures. ServerIron application switches now offer the benefits of intelligent and highly scalable flow-based load balancing to distribute traffic among two or more security devices to scale the capacity of the security solution. Additionally, high-availability features including rapid and automatic failure detection with stateful failover provide for a fault-tolerant design that delivers continuous uptime. ServerIron application switches support many high-availability network designs to integrate smoothly into existing and new data center network infrastructure. Featuring support for active-active and active-square designs, the switches ensure peak security enforcement and service up time even in the event of a catastrophic failure in the network infrastructure. "Traditionally, firewall performance and reliability lagged network speeds and high-availability requirements," said Gopala Tumuluri, product line manager for application traffic management products at Foundry. "Foundry's field-proven ServerIron switches enable customers to implement high-performance, scalable and high-availability security solutions for their networks. With the capacity to load balance more than 10 gigabits per second, the ServerIron can be used in the most demanding environments. Additionally, ServerIron switches perform important security functions including protecting against DoS and Distributed DoS attacks to further optimize the performance of the security infrastructure." ServerIron 450 and 850 application switches lead the industry in performance with multi-gigabit DoS attack protection, and scalable performance to over 10 Gbps of application throughput. The ServerIronGT E-series family of application switches won the "Best Enterprise Infrastructure Product" award at N+I Tokyo in 2004 for its combination of Layer 2-7 feature integration, attractive pricing, high-availability design, port expandability and performance upgradeability. Foundry's highly-intelligent TrafficWorks operating system supports a rich set of Layer 4 and Layer 7 content-based load balancing services, high-availability configurations with stateful failover, a suite of network defense measures including protection against denial of service attacks and policy-based load balancing for SPAM mitigation. Optional TrafficWorks features include GSLB and IP routing. Some of the world's most demanding customers such as AOL TimeWarner, NTT DoCoMo, and Wachovia Bank rely on Foundry ServerIron systems for server farm scalability and application security.