The flagship product line from Internet start-up Andes Networks (originally known as Beeline Networks), the A5000 series of devices are drop-in appliances that both manage and accelerate the processing of SSL transactions on secure networks. Initially, the devices are expected to be offered in three flavors; providing a handling capacity of 2,000 transactions per second for the low end A5210 Model 1, to 10,000 transactions per second for the A5210 Model 3.

The devices are built around the vendor's own "Packetized SSL" technology, which itself relies on a proprietary ZOO ASIC RSA math co-processor capable of processing up to 15,000 RSA operations per second. Packetized SSL is a method which "fuses" SSL processing with TCP processing, allowing the Andes devices to process SSL operations on a packet-by packet basis instead of being forced to handle the entire SSL message at a single point. According to the vendor, their Packetized SSL technology enables the processing of SSL traffic at line speed and is 100% compatible with existing SSL systems.

The A5000 devices are compatible with SSL3.0/TLS1.0 specifications, and are supplied in 1U rack-mountable enclosures. They can serve as a Certificate Authority (supporting the issuing of up to 256 x.509 certificates), and additionally can operate in multiple modes depending on the existence of 3rd party traffic management devices on the network. In "In-Line" mode, all network traffic is routed through the device; in "One-Arm" mode only SSL traffic is routed through the device by a single traffic management appliance; and in "Duplex One-Arm" mode multiple traffic management devices can funnel all of their SSL traffic through separate Ethernet ports on the A5210 - with the A5210 ensuring that traffic is then returned to the port it originated from.

The initial device from Andes is expected to be available in the 3rd quarter of 2001 in 3 models priced from $16,980 to $59,980. The high end model is listed as supporting 10,000 transactions per second, 5,000 SSL handshakes per second, and 128,000 concurrent SSL sessions. Contact Andes Networks for further information.

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