News and Events

2006

PETER KIEWIT INSTITUTE SECURES 10 GIGABIT ETHERNET NETWORK WITH FORCE10 P-SERIES SECURITY APPLIANCE

MILPITAS, Calif., May 15, 2006 — Force10 Networks®, a pioneer in building and securing high performance networks, today announced that the Peter Kiewit Institute (PKI) has deployed the P-Series family of security appliances to secure its advanced research network and computing clusters. As the industry’s only security appliance capable of inspecting, monitoring and capturing traffic at line-rate 10 Gigabit speeds, the Force10 P-Series delivers the high speed protection PKI requires to protect its network without compromising performance.

“In approaching security from a networking perspective, Force10 has set a new bar with its P-Series by delivering security that can, for the first time, protect high speed, 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks like ours,” said Winnie Callahan, executive director of the Peter Kiewit Institute, home to the University of Nebraska – Lincoln's College of Engineering and the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s College of Information Science. “By combining technology that can inspect and monitor traffic at wire speed with the flexibility of open source software, Force10 is redefining how organizations secure their networks.”

Last year, PKI deployed the Force10 TeraScale E-Series to build a high performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet research network and bioinformatics cluster. With the P-Series, PKI can now secure that network by inspecting and monitoring traffic at line-rate speeds. Additionally, with support for open source applications, the P-Series provides PKI with a wide range of signatures and rules to choose from that have been extensively tested and proven throughout the security community.

“Customers like PKI have built high performance networks with the TeraScale E-Series but found that they had no way to ensure security at such high speeds,” said Mark Cooper, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Force10 Networks. “The P-Series brings the same innovation to security that the E-Series brought to networking and enables organizations like PKI to build and secure high performance networks.”

At the foundation of the Force10 P-Series is the patented Dynamic Parallel Inspection (DPI) technology, a patented signature processing architecture that delivers the scalability required to secure 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks regardless of traffic conditions. The Force10 DPI technology employs multiple hardware-based engines to simultaneously process thousands of rules on a single packet. Additionally, the ability to write new rules, policies and signatures directly to hardware in real time provides IT managers with the flexibility they need to combat security threats and attacks.

To provide further flexibility, the Force10 P-Series supports open source network security applications, enabling customers to specify policies from public domain signatures or standard network monitoring libraries. An open application program interface also allows IT managers to develop custom signatures for firewalling, denial of service attacks and packet and flow analysis applications.

PKI has created an innovative information technology and engineering program by developing close ties with business and industry and drawing from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln's College of Engineering and the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s College of Information Science. Leveraging a state-of-the-art infrastructure, PKI enables students to gain working knowledge of systems architecture as well as the network requirements to support applications such as data collection and mining.

Contact:
Peter Ruzicka
Force10 Networks Inc.
408-965-5151
pruzicka@force10networks.com

Contact:
Jennifer Arculeo
Force10 Networks Inc.
408-965-5194
jarculeo@force10networks.com

About Force10 Networks
Force10 Networks is the pioneer in building and securing high performance networks. Based on a revolutionary system architecture that delivers best-in-class resiliency and massive scalability, Force10’s TeraScale E-Series switch/routers ensure predictable application performance, increase network availability, and reduce operating costs. Today, many of the world’s largest Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks depend on Force10 Networks. For additional information, please visit www.force10networks.com.

Force10 Networks and E-Series are registered trademarks, and P-Series, S-Series, TeraScale and FTOS are trademarks of Force10 Networks, Inc. All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders.