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Re: [FW-1] Nortel / Alteon? (was: Re: [FW-1] Crossbeam)
I think you might be referring to the new chassis architecture by Crossbeam
Systems. Please excuse any vagueness as I am paraphrasing from memory and
it has been a little while. The product(s) are geared towards security and
they currently have partnered with Checkpoint for firewalls (Firewall-1),
Enterasys Networks for Intrusion Detection with the Dragon product, and
virus protection and content scanning with Trend Micro. I believe they also
support Snort for Intrusion Detection.
Crossbeam is developing a chassis which houses three types of blades --
interfaces, servers, and management. The interfaces can handle inbound and
outbound traffic over 10/100 ports and gigabit ports. The data is passed
over the backplane for inspection by any/all of the aforementioned products.
The application blades can run any of the aforemention products and they
come pre-installed although they need to be licensed, configured, etc. I am
a little vague about the management blades, but they essentially monitor the
chassis, help it recover from failures and dynamically rebuild the system to
previously configured needs. The options seem to be flexible and adaptable.
The product offers some really cool features. The configured applications
are stored as images on the management blades. If a blade fails and a spare
is available it will automatically reconfigue the spare to handle the
failure. This sounds normal, except when you consider that the failure
could be the firewall, the IDS, or the anti-virus. Regardless of which one
fails, the spare is built. If there is more than one failure or there are
no spares, there can be loadbalancing of resources as well. It does these
things and more according to the presentation and the marketing. Again, I
am recalling from memory, but this type of architecture can produce some
excellent results. If they can produce what they are marketing, it will be
a great tool for those who can shovel out the bucks.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Volker Tanger" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2002 7:38 AM
Subject: [FW-1] Nortel / Alteon? (was: Re: [FW-1] Crossbeam)
> Perry, Keith wrote:
>
> > Has anyone had experience with Crossbeam firewalls? If so, could you
> > please provide me any information about the pros and cons of this type
> > of solution?
>
>
> I guess you are talking about Nortel's "Crossbeam-40" switch?
> http://www.checkpoint.com/products/choice/platforms/crossbeamx40.html
>
> In comparison: has someone experience with the Alteons (now Nortel, too)
> http://www.checkpoint.com/products/choice/platforms/nortel5610.html or
> http://www.checkpoint.com/products/choice/platforms/nortel5710.html ??
>
> It would be great if you could give a brief description on how they
> differ from a vanilla VPN-1 e.g. on Linux or Nokia (minus higher network
> throughput, of course) for the Crossbeam as well as the Alteon?
>
> Thanks a lot!
>
> Volker Tanger
> IT-Security Consulting
>
> --
> discon gmbh
> Wrangelstra�e 100
> D-10997 Berlin
>
> fon +49 30 6104-3307
> fax +49 30 6104-3461
>
> [email protected]
> http://www.discon.de/
>
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