Exalt Communications has announced that Airband Communications, the largest fixed-wireless voice and data provider for businesses in the U.S., has deployed Exalt microwave backhaul systems to provide high performance, fully encrypted connectivity for a Federal government agency located in Washington, DC. Airband selected the Exalt systems because they are the only microwave backhaul systems on the market that can deliver a FIPS 197-compliant link at the designed committed information rate (CIR).

When its customer required FIPs-compliant AES encryption for its mission-critical network, Airband Communications turned to Exalt as the only microwave backhaul manufacturer providing this type of encryption at full throughput. Airband Communications deployed Exalt 11 GHz and 23 GHz split-mount systems to link the government agency's various sites with the Airband core network and from there back to the agency's own data center. The Exalt systems are configured to carry up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) of Ethernet traffic over link distances ranging up to five miles.

"Our customer requires encryption, and it wasn't just any encryption -- they want it to be FIPS-compliant," said Mike Binder, vice president of engineering at Airband Communications. "Exalt is the only vendor- with FIPS-compliant security at full throughput on the licensed links, and Exalt makes it easy to increase the bandwidth on links through simple license key upgrades."

In addition to FIPs-compliant 128- and 256-bit AES encryption, Exalt systems support both SSL and SSH protocols to encrypt web and telnet access, and the most secure SNMP v3 version available to ensure protection of potentially sensitive network monitoring and management traffic through secure user authentication and message encryption. 

"Airband's selection of Exalt is another example of how Exalt keeps customer needs paramount in system design," said Amir Zoufonoun, CEO of Exalt Communications. "Whatever the requirement or application, there's an Exalt system to match without trade-offs or compromises."