Argon Blaster - Flow Simulation at 10 Gbps

Argon Design announced the launch of ".. Argon Blaster, the industry’s first flow simulation solution for generating realistic, Internet scale traffic loads and applications to test networking and security equipment. Blaster delivers a line-rate, timing-accurate, flow-simulation application on an affordable PCIe acceleration card for use in standard x86 platforms ..Blaster pricing starts at $9,999, including 12-month warranty and customer support"

"Blaster is a simple-to-use application for custom flow and packet generation that runs on standard Linux server platforms accelerated by Netronome's flow processors [see "Netronome Launches a 200 Gbps Flow Processor" - here]. Combining a Netronome Flow Engine PCIe acceleration card with an intelligent software application from Argon Design, Blaster is capable of saturating a 10 Gbps link with application traffic with accurate, consistent, per-flow rate control for up to a million unique flows".
  

See "Argon Blaster Delivers Industry’s First Flow Simulator and Traffic Generator" - here.

DPI Announcement: Netronome Launches a 200 Gbps Flow Processor

Netronome disclosed the details of the "NFP-6xxx family of processors .. the industry’s first programmable 200Gbps flow processor. The scalable NFP-6xxx product line targets designs from 10 to 400 Gbps based on the following features and supported flow processing building blocks: 256 Gbps Processing Complex, 100 Dedicated Accelerators, Optimized Memory Architecture, 50 Gbps Security Processing, 720 Gbps of Processor I/O, Easy and Flexible Programing Tools and Extensive Software Libraries.

Netronome's ecosystem partners list includes DPI enabling technology software vendors:

• Qosmos (see "Netronome and Qosmos to Offer DPI Processing at 100Gbps" - here)
• Vineyard Networks (see "Vineyard Partners with Netronome and LSI" - here).

See "Netronome Unveils 200 Gbps Flow Processor" - here.

DPI Announcements: Vineyard Partners with Netronome and LSI

Vineyard Networks announced two partnerships with packet processor vendors for its DPI code software library Network Application Visibility Library (NAVL), in addition to the previously announced support to Cavium (here):

• Netronome - "a strategic partnership to provide a 40Gbps OEM Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) solution for vendors building next-generation, application-aware networking applications. The solution combines Vineyard’s Network Application Visibility Library (NAVL) DPI engine and Netronome’s Network Flow Processors to offer advanced networking functionality, high performance flow processing, application recognition and metadata extraction at line rate 40Gbps speeds with a follow on platform capable of performing DPI at 100Gbps"
  
  See "Vineyard Networks and Netronome release 40Gbps DPI offering for Next-Generation Networking Applications" - here.

• LSI: "collaboration to provide a next-generation Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) OEM solution .. Vineyard's next-generation DPI engine (NAVL - Network Application Visibility Library) has been integrated with the advanced hardware architecture of LSI's Axxia™ communication processor family of products to accelerate deep application recognition and metadata extraction of network traffic".
  
  See "Vineyard Networks and LSI Partner to Accelerate Deep Packet Inspection" - here.

NI Alliance is Expanding Fast - Avvasi, Sasken and Netronome Joined

    

Since I first covered the Network Intelligence Alliance (here) it grew very quickly and has now 26 members  (complete list here).

The following explains how the alliance may help service providers:

".. Service providers can add intelligence to their networks by calling on turnkey providers or by working with network intelligence companies directly. Most of the solutions they ultimately implement are created by NI Alliance members that have collaborated to put the necessary piece parts together. Alliance members that are not turnkey providers typically focus on different network intelligence issues including: decoding traffic, protecting networks, making fast processor chips or interface cards, building chassis for chips and cards, and creating devices and procedures that test the network intelligence products to help ensure they work properly",

3 members joined recently:

• Avvasi (here) - See "Avvasi Joins NI Alliance to Drive Innovation and Leadership For Next-Gen Network Solutions" - here
   
• Sasken - see "Sasken Joins Network Intelligence Alliance to Drive Innovation and Leadership For Next-Generation Network Solutions" - here
   
• Netronome (here) - see "Netronome Joins Network Intelligence Alliance to Drive Innovation and Leadership For Next-Generation Network Solutions" - here. 

DPI Announcements: NetLogic Multi-core Processor w/Layer 7 Processing

  

Embedding/integrating multi-core packet processors with DPI becomes more competitive as we now have 3 offering: Cavium (here) and Netronome (here) as well as NetLogic recently announced "..XLP316S multi-core, multi-threaded processor which integrates best-in-class NETL7™ Layer 7 knowledge-based processor technology.  This highly integrated processor that combines NetLogic Microsystems’ industry-leading XLP™ multi-core processing and NETL7 knowledge-based processing technologies is ideal for next-generation network security appliances, deep-packet inspection (DPI) gateways, intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and anti-malware gateways".  

See "NetLogic Microsystems Introduces Best-in-Class XLP™ Multi-Core Security Processor with Integrated NETL7™ Knowledge-based Processor" - here.

"The XLP316S .. is targeted to offer unparalleled performance of 20Gbps and 30 million packets-per-second (Mpps) .. The NETL7 knowledge-based processing technology features the Intelligent Finite Automaton (IFA) architecture which .. natively performs stateful cross-packet inspection in hardware. Furthermore, it integrates on-chip memory to provide ultra-low latency access to on-chip signature databases, allowing the processors to accelerate complex and iterative content inspection while eliminating the need to provision for the high-latency and costly off-chip memory that are required by competing solutions".

For comparison - Cavium claims for 40Gbps and Netronome for 100Gbps performance. Not sure if all claims are made on equal basis and assumptions ..

Chris O’Reilly (picture), VP of marketing at NetLogic Microsystems said “..As the industry’s only quad-issue, quad-threaded processor with integrated layer 7 knowledge-based processing technology, our XLP316S processor is uniquely suited to address the growing market for Layers 2 - 7 security processing in enterprise, small-and-midsize business (SMB) and carrier-class networks".

Netronome and Qosmos to Offer DPI Processing at 100Gbps

  

Netronome and Qosmos announced "a joint solution to scale deep packet inspection (DPI) from 1Gbps to 100Gbps while simultaneously offering the richest detection set for thousands of applications and protocols [see details here]. The integrated solution is the result of a strategic partnership between the companies and is designed for manufacturers of security applications".

See "Netronome Expands DPI Capabilities Through Partnership With Qosmos" - here.

Jarrod Siket (picture), SVP of sales and marketing at Netronome said: “Netronome pioneered flow processing and is committed to providing its customers the silicon, hardware, software and building blocks to securely process flows at the speeds required for next generation platforms .. This exciting partnership with Qosmos expands our offering to include both current and emerging protocols, frequently updated, from the recognized leader in Network Intelligence and DPI software.”

See also - "How to Build DPI Products? (Part I - CPU Architecture)" - here.

Recently, Cavium announced a 40 Gbps DPI processor (here).

How to Build DPI Products? (Part I - CPU Architecture)

 

2 new documents, from Radisys and Netronome, may help DPI vendors to design high performance products. This post covers the latter, to be followed by the Radisys' document.

Nabil Damouny, senior director of business development at Netronome (a vendor of network flow processors), analyzes the CPU architecture for embedded communication equipment, such as DPI, and recommends the following:

"The combined solution is heterogeneous in nature: the x86 takes care of application processing, control plane processing and management, while the network flow processor manages the packet- and flow-based network I/O subsystem."   

See "The World of Secure, Virtualized Networking" - here.

"In a high-performance communication system, more than one type of processor is needed to keep up with the stringent requirements of packet processing, security and virtualization, especially at 10 Gbps and above. A typical communication system needs to be able to process packets and/or flows at all layers of the 7-Layer OSI model. x86 CPUs are an excellent choice for the application layer (L7) and control plane processing (see chart below)"  

"Highly programmable network flow coprocessors designed to work closely with commodity x86-based systems is a perfect match for security appliances (see chart below)."

See also -

• 
  
  Rumors: Cavium Received Proposal from Cisco - What does it Mean for DPI vendors?  - here
• 
  
  DPI Announcements - NetLogic 40Gbps Layer 7 Processing Solution  - here
• 
  
  DPI Announcements - Cavium Networks OCTEON II CN68XX  - here