Storage Technology Corp’s Network system group believes its ATLAS ATM Line Access and Security system makes it the only company that can successfully offer firewalls on high speed Asynchronous Transfer networks. The company claims the problem with implementing firewalls on high speed Asynchronous Transfer Mode networks is that the firewall acts as a bottleneck on the network. According to StorageTek, other vendors don’t have the technology to add security features to high speed ATM networks. It believes that ATLAS is the only system that can filter ATM at 155Mbps. Filtering is the addition of firewall capabilities to switches or routers which select on the basis of traffic source, destination, user identification and type of traffic. Central to the ATLAS system is StorageTek’s policy cache architecture, firmware that stores the network security configuration. The final part of the ATM cell filtering is completed via the policy cache, which makes the delay on the network minimal. ATLAS is a box fitted to the ATM fiber, transparent to the network, that supports IP to ATM translation. The management is via side band SCSI-2, Ethernet and ATM interfaces. Currently the system only filters data packets(ATM Class 5), and in October StorageTek plan to add Encryption, Class 1-4 ATM filtering, Virtual Path and Virtual Circuit filtering to the system. StorageTek hopes to make available a 622Mbps version by early next year. ATLAS is shipping now direct from the company and costs between $60,000 and $100,000.
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