September 3, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — According to a report by ZDNet, Sun Microsystems (sun.com) will begin shipping new networking devices this month. The devices are based on technology acquired early this year from data center switch manufacturer Nauticus Networks (nauticusnet.com).
r
r
The products will be officially announced at Sun’s quarterly product announcement event on September 21, 2004, the report said.
r
r
Nauticus technology balances loads among multiple servers and includes custom processors that accelerate SSL traffic.
r
r
Web site communications encrypted with the widely-used Secure Socket Layer standard directly links the Web browser’s computer with the server. John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun’s Network Systems Group, explained in the report that such direct connections can make it harder to adjust and control which servers are active. Nauticus technology can better balance the communications load among servers making SSL connections, said Fowler. It provides an intermediate terminus for the SSL connections from a Web browser and then divides the connections evenly to the actual servers, re-encrypting traffic on the fly.
r
r
According to Fowler, a Nauticus system can transfer SSL data at speeds of 2GB per second and can maintain more than 100,000 SSL connections.
