GigaFin says that although generalist security appliances can handle your everyday needs, you'll need its appliance when you're hit with a massive attack.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [May 15, 2008]

Cupertino, Calif.-based equipment maker GigaFin Networks is new, even for an internet company. "We've been shipping product for about a year now," says Mervyn Alamgir, GigaFin director of marketing.

He claims last mover advantage. GigaFin's products, Alamgir says, are attuned to the latest internet threat. "Our ISP customers are mostly hosting providers. Their servers host applications like online gaming or media streaming," says Alamgir.

Those servers can get hit hard, especially in South Korea, where most data centers have massive pipes and many residential users are on fiber. "In the beginning of 2007, we began to see a lot of DoS attacks," says Matthew Suh, president of i9Biz, a Los Angeles-based webhost and GigaFin customer.

"The attackers tried to overload our server traffic, with up to 4 Gbps and over 1 million packets per second."

The company already had a Juniper appliance, and tried several others. GigaFin stepped in. Now, i9Biz uses the Juniper for everything but uses the GigaFin FlowLine 500 to stop the DoS attacks.

Specifications
The GigaFin FlowLine 500 has a pair of gigabit Ethernet ports. The FlowLine 500F has SPF ports (for fiber networks). Both support 1 Gbps throughput inline. They have a port for out of band monitoring, and an RJ-45 jack for a direct console connection.

In addition to DoS prevention, the FlowLine 500 can also deliver a firewall, traffic monitoring, and P2P monitoring and management.

Alamgir notes that the box has been designed to be small and efficient. The GigaFin website says that the FlowLine 500 measures 5" x 10" and is 1.5" high. The box weighs 2 pounds and uses 15 Watts.

Because it is so small, Alamgir says the box is designed to be deployed in front of a critical server. Suh reports that he's using 11 boxes in his main data center, four of them for his largest customer, who is on multiple servers and uses a lot of bandwidth.

As the data center moves towards 10 GigE, GigaFin is working with 10 gigabit switch vendors to allow the FlowLine to work with their equipment.

"Most customers are not asking for 10 Gbps throughput right now," Alamgir says. Instead, they want a clear upgrade path for the future, and a box, like GigaFin's, that can handle 1 Gbps today.

Pricing and availability
The GigaFin FlowLine 500 and FlowLine 500F are available now. The FlowLine is priced at $3,500 and the FlowLine 500F at $3,800.

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