Ixia and Nortel Networks Successfully Demonstrate Policy Server Management Techniques in Denial of Service Attacks

Business Wire, June 20, 2000

Business Editors

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 20, 2000

Ixia joined with Nortel Networks (NYSE:NT) (TSE:NT) at the recent iBAND4 Conference to create a network showcase demonstrating a variety of Policy Management techniques aimed at handling Denial of Service Attacks (DoS). DoS attacks are a prominent and growing concern for network managers across the Internet since they have the power to cripple Web sites and interrupt network traffic.

As a Platinum Sponsor of the iBAND4 event, Ixia underscored its commitment to providing leadership on issues of bandwidth management, traffic engineering and service provisioning. The Denial of Service Showcase Ixia developed with Nortel was focused on Ping-of-Death, Flood Ping, and similar DoS type attacks. The Showcase was aimed at illustrating how sophisticated network policies can be used to reduce the impact of DoS attacks while allowing troubleshooting of network problems to continue.

"Ixia created the tools to enable us to generate DoS traffic, and analyze the behavior of our Policy Server and Web Server host in a realistic scale Internet environment," said Ron Pashby, Director of the Innovations.Lab for Nortel. "Together our simulated network demonstrated the effectiveness of implementing policy management tactics in the face of high-volume, hostile Ping attacks to successfully filter traffic types."

Although network policy is most often viewed as enabling access for certain applications for users, in the DoS Showcase, Ixia generated extremely high-volume, Internet-scale traffic to allow the Nortel policy server to apply discrete policies to reduce access selectively for potentially harmful traffic without disabling legitimate traffic in the network.

About Ixia

Ixia delivers powerful, distributed multiport traffic generators and performance analyzers for wire-speed testing and verification of today's advanced LAN and WAN multilayer switches, cable television Internet products, and other optical networking equipment utilizing Packet Over SONET/SDH, and 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet interfaces. Our products are distinguished by their accuracy and reliability; high port density; diversity of support for emerging, high-speed interfaces and protocol standards; as well as their adaptability to the industry's constant evolution. For more information, contact Ixia at 26601 W. Agoura Rd., Calabasas, Calif. 91302; 818/871-1800, fax: 818/871-1805; e-mail: info@ixiacom.com; or visit the company's Web Site at http://www.ixiacom.com.