Agile eXchange for Line-rate Encryption (AXLE)Agile eXchange for Line-rate Encryption (AXLE)

Overview

The US Government, Department of Defense, civilian and other various agencies deploy networks that are comprised of three levels of hierarchy: Local Area Networks, the Network Edge and the Core Networks. The Local Area Networks (LANs) provide user connectivity to data, voice, and video services. The Network Edge connects LANs to the core networks. The Core Networks provide the necessary seamless connectivity between each of the LANs, which can be geographically isolated across the globe.

Network architects are tasked with designing, deploying and maintaining a globally connected high performance secure network that services a number of heterogeneous applications and systems. This network architecture may span multiple agencies via numerous incompatible legacy core technologies with each agency using some combination of Ethernet, ATM, and InfiniBand for LAN connectivity. These networks are used predominately to provide scalable, seamless communications between data storage and compute resources that are physically distributed throughout the world.

Many network architects address these core network challenges by deploying transport technologies that include multi-gigabit optical core networks that use point-to-point links over WDM or dark fiber with SONET framing and a service layer that includes IP, MPLS, or legacy ATM.

Architecture Challenges

The challenges that must be addressed to deliver on the network architecture objectives are two fold. First, each of the assets and their contents must be secured without diminishing the network performance required to foster efficient workflow. This is accomplished using Government-grade (National Security Agency (NSA) Type 1) encryption devices. Second, interoperability must be maintained between each of the distinct core networks and unique deployed encryption systems so that seamless connectivity is maintained along with a transparent policy scheme.

Securing these heterogeneous networks while maintaining the required performance and service delivery is often difficult, as there are few secure NSA Type 1 encryption devices capable of operating at 2.5G and 10G rates for all traffic types.

The Solution

Bay Microsystems has developed a solution that eliminates the barriers in securing multi-gigabit LAN and core networks, thereby enabling line-rate, unencumbered secure communication in high performance networks.

The Bay Microsystems Protocol Agile encryption solution delivers 1G to 10G Ethernet, IP and MPLS layer 2 line-rate tunneling to provide adaptation allowing for transparent encryption solutions that include a broad spectrum of network interfaces which empowers agencies to interwork most networking protocols, including:

• IP/MPLS
• 10G Ethernet
• InfiniBand
• SONET
• Legacy ATM

Without ABEx	With ABEx

More Information

For more information on how it works, please see our Securing High Performance Networks solution brief.