FORE: INTEL gets into VPN, MSFT may be eyeing applications aware NT-Based Networking company
The next generation of networking "Applications Aware" (as said it before on this thread) will dwarf the current networking market;
FORE with their technology will greatly benefit from this.
FORE at this price is still a good buy, IMO.
---------- from FORE news release
Application Awareness Differentiates ESX Switches From Other L3/L4 Devices
Unlike traditional routers and switches, the ESX-4800 and ESX-2400 switches provide
Application Aware switching to classify application flows and enforce a variety of
policies, such as security or class of service, at wire speed on any port. The ASICs on
these ESX switches are unique in their ability to support stateful application flow
classification -- flows with dynamic TCP or UDP port assignments. Examples of stateful
applications include those based on H.323, DCOM, CORBA, Sun RPC, and FTP.
This is a distinct advantage over traditional routers with filtering, which can only classify
static TCP or UDP port assignments.
The management and control of application traffic is supported by an Integrated
Network Services Switching architecture, providing superior flexibility and investment
protection. This architecture employs Windows NT Server as an embedded,
multi-service operating system with support for application agent or service agent
plug-ins that uniquely integrate the network infrastructure with applications and services,
essentially binding the infrastructure, applications and services together.
The first such agent is the Firewall Switching Agent, providing wire-speed TCP/IP
firewalling, which was awarded the overall Grand Prize at NetWorld+Interop Las
Vegas in May of this year. Additional agents are planned to support applications such as
enterprise resource planning (ERP), directory enabled network services, naming
services, videoconferencing and IP telephony.
"Organizations using distributed computing and collaborative applications require more
intelligence within the network for better manageability and cost savings," said Kevin
Kean, group product manager of Windows NT Server Communications at Microsoft
Corp. "FORE's novel approach of combining Windows NT networking services and
multi-gigabit switching ASICs is an excellent way to address the requirements of these
new network-powered applications."
Application Awareness Unleashes the Power of a Multiservice Core |
