Radware's latest switching system is no incremental seasonal upgrade—it's an entirely new platform that represents a newfangled approach to intelligent routing.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [December 19, 2001]

Radware unveiled the Peer Director module, rouding out the offerings for its Application Switch II hardware platform, at Internet World in New York City last week. We were treated to a personalized presentation by Radware—a company that makes Internet Traffic Management (ITM) a primary line of business.

Radware's "intelligent routing" platform consists of four products that share the same platform: 500 MHz Power PC processor from Motorola and shared ports in your choice of 7 ports at 1 Gbps or 5 ports at 1 Gbps plus 16 ports of Fast Ethernet.

While PC manufacturers make a big stink about introducing minor upgrades, like incremental speed advancements, this is not the case with Radware. The Application Switch II is a real upgrade from its older cousin that used a 9.6 Gbps backplane operating at exactly half the speed of the new version and a 266 MHz Power PC processor providing barely half the speed of new edition.

Because the Radware device is based on a hardware implementation employing Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), it is designed to be more stable than similar products operating from unreliable disk drives prone to eventual failure. As a result of the Application Switch II using a Power PC Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) processor, it is also designed to be faster than similar products based on Complete Instruction Set Computer (CISC) chips.

Radware's Configware interface

Radware's newest product family built on Application Switch II technologies include:

Peer Director: Designed for intelligent routing beyond Border Gateway Protocols. While BGP assumes that the path with the fewest hops is the quickest, Peer Director measures latency, knows the price of different lines, and chooses the most cost-effective route for Internet traffic based on preprogrammed rules. Radware also touts the product's ability to accelerate both inbound and outbound traffic, a feature the company calls "bi-directional load balancing."

Web Server Director: When networks need to ensure Web site availability, WSD offers a local solution at the core that keeps the network up and handles server issues by redirecting traffic within a server farm. The WSD global solution can also redirect traffic to a different data center, making for a load balancing system that leverages planet earth.

Cache Server Director: Allows service providers to build and load balance cache farms based on content. Radware says its CSD product eliminates the need to configure individual caching clients, ensuring that clients will use available cache and not try to bypass the service set.

LinkProof: Designed for link traffic management, Radware's LD system uses proprietary Smart NAT to speed delivery to and from the network and also checks the health of any path being used, adjusting traffic accordingly.

FireProof: Allows service providers to supply security systems through firewall farms. Using multiple firewalls, rather than a single barrier, eliminates the possibility of creating a single point of failure and allows the Radware device to distribute traffic more efficiently.

Radware's SynApps module, available as an option for all of the products, provides additional stability by checking traffic against a database of over 450 attack signatures. This does not replace a firewall, merely supplements an existing firewall.

In addition, the SynApps module is capable of checking each network element as well as the function that are running, like RADIUS or streaming media, to make sure that network traffic is behaving as desired.

Pricing and availability
The Application Switch II is available now. Prices of the switch in various configurations are as follows:

• Web Server Director: $32,000
• LinkProof: $27,000
• FireProof: $23,995
• Cache Server Director: $21,995

Tech support is extra and different options are available. For specialized deployments, Radware has additional products, like the CertainT 100 SSL Accelerator that speeds up SSL processing for transaction-heavy e-commerce sites.

Radware also has stipped-down versions of the above products, with 32 MB of RAM and two or four Fast Ethernet ports:

• LinkProof Entry Level two ports: $8,250
• FireProof Entry Level two ports: $7,500
• FireProof Entry Level four ports: $8,500
• Cache Server Director two ports: $7,995
• WebServer Director Pro+ two ports: $8,995

—End