Express DS 250 / 255

Hifn's Express DS 250 and new Express DS 255 cards are targeted to OEMs and System Integrators, and provide them with a hardware-based means of processing IPsec and SSL packets in their gear. Listed suggested uses for the cards include within VPN gateways or firewalls, or in Web servers or secured storage appliances.

The cards both provide hardware-accelerated processing of IPsec and SSL transactions, and both support Linux and FreeBSD OCF. An enablement package is included with the boards for Linux, VxWorks, and Windows support; the vendor also notes that OEMs who use the cards require an SDK license for systems integration software development.

Based on the vendor's own Hifn 8155 security processor, a key feature of the boards is their built-in load balancing ability that allows them to simultaneously process multiple protocols without pre-allocating protocols or sessions to the chip's processing units. The result of the technology, according to the vendor, is full performance from 1 to 250,000 sessions and the ability to process 400K packets per second up to 2 Gb/sec.

The cards additionally feature NIST-certified algorithms (AES 128, AES 192, AES 256, DES, 3DES, and ARC4 are supported), a hardware random number generator, support for LZS-based data compression, and support for SHA-1 and MD-5 message verification.

The DS 250 is a full-height card for PCI-X deployments (133 MHz backward compatible to 64-/32-bit, 66/33 MHz); while the new DS 255 is offered in a half-height form factor for deployment in PCI Express (4 lane) implementations.

Both cards are available now; with the DS 255 priced at $1,195.

Contact the vendor for further information.