Foundry Announces High Performance Active-Square Firewall Load Balancing and SYN-Guard Denial of Service Attack Protection for Next Generation Web Infrastructures

Business Wire, Sept 11, 2001

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 11, 2001

Foundry Extends Layer 4-7 Switch Leadership with New Software

Release to Improve Web Infrastructure Security, Scalability, and

Performance

Foundry Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced availability of new features on the ServerIron(R) family of Internet traffic and content management switches. With the newest release of Internet IronWare(TM) software, the ServerIron chassis-based models will provide enhanced high availability server and firewall load balancing and additional security features to protect Web server farms from Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

Major new Internet IronWare features include:

-- Active-Square(TM) for synchronizing session information between two active
ServerIron switches load balancing traffic through firewalls for maximum
redundancy and performance scalability;

-- SYN-Guard(TM) to thwart Denial of Service (DoS) attacks designed to exhaust
server resources;

-- Connection Rate Limiting (CRL) for managing the rate at which downstream
devices such as Web servers, firewalls, and cache are utilized to provide
availability and quality of services;

-- High Availability Symmetric Server Load Balancing (SSLB) for a pair of
ServerIron switches that allows server load balancing (SLB) for the same public
IP address, reducing complexity of network management and provides high
availability to data centers and server farms; and

Active-Square: High Availability for Firewall Load Balancing

Active-Square is a new feature for high-availability firewall load balancing (FWLB) on the ServerIron 400 and ServerIron 800. Customers can deploy ServerIron load-balancing switches in a pair for stateful failover while also using both switches to process and forward traffic. ServerIron FWLB removes firewall bottlenecks and now also eliminates unused capacity that plagues active-standby configurations.

With Active-Square, ServerIron switches exchange information about client/server transactions, synchronizing session data for intelligent content switching. Both switches monitor traffic to ensure that requests are forwarded to the same firewall regardless of which switch is handling the traffic. This enables each switch to be able to forward traffic transparently without impact to users in the event of a switch failure.

SYN-Guard: Robust Protection Against Denial of Service Attacks (DoS)

As the Internet has risen in popularity, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are on the rise. By sending repeated and gratuitous requests, DoS attacks are intended to overwhelm corporate infrastructure and temporarily shutdown Web servers.

Foundry has implemented SYN-Guard on ServerIron switches to head off such attacks by providing IT administrators the capability to proactively monitor unusual traffic and automate measures that protect downstream servers.

ServerIron switches with SYN-Guard, inspect all incoming client requests for corporate services over HTTP. Requests that follow TCP protocol for session initiation are forwarded to the appropriate server while broken protocols result in session resets. SYN-Guard prevents DoS attacks from getting through and paralyzing servers.

ServerIron switches can offload DoS attack monitoring and prevention from firewalls without impact to network performance. With SYN-Guard, ServerIron switches provide a first line of defense and are a powerful addition to an overall network security apparatus, giving network administrators a proactive tool to fend off DoS attacks that can quickly paralyze a site.

Connection Rate Limiting

Connection Rate Limiting (CRL) on ServerIron switches provides IT administrators control over transaction load placed on downstream devices such as servers, firewalls, and cache servers. ServerIron CRL settings can also be configured to specify the alternate course of action to be taken in the event maximum connections per device has been reached.

Enabling CRL on ServerIron switches is useful in situations where many short-lived connections can be generated beyond the servers' capabilities. With CRL, server resources are managed and availability is ensured.

Symmetric Server Load Balancing (SSLB) for Reducing Network Design Complexity

Internet IronWare enhances symmetric server load balancing (SSLB) by enabling ServerIron switch pairs to actively load balance traffic for the same IP address while synchronizing session state information. In the event that one switch fails, all traffic is automatically forwarded to the active switch and, based on stored state information, forwarded to the same firewall or server to complete the transaction. Pricing and Availability

New version of Internet IronWare will be available in September 2001 for all new and existing ServerIron 400 and 800 customers.

About Foundry Networks

Foundry Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:FDRY) is a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing including Internet routers, Layer 2/3 LAN switches, and Layer 4-7 Internet traffic and content delivery switches. Foundry's 3,750 customers include the world's premier ISPs and enterprises, portals, search engines, e-commerce sites, and universities along with the leading entertainment, pharmaceutical, government, financial, and manufacturing companies. Some of these customers include: AOL (NYSE:AOL), EarthLink (NASDAQ:ELNK), AT&T WorldNet, MSN, Verio, Cable & Wireless (NYSE:CWP), Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO), Incyte Genomics, Inc. (NASDAQ:INCY), The University of Washington, University of Miami, LucasFilm, U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy, NASA and NIH. For more information about the company and its products, call 1.888.TURBO.LAN or visit www.foundrynetworks.com.