F5 Networks Expands BIG-IP Line Of Network Management Hardware

F5 Networks has enhanced and expanded its BIG-IP line of network traffic management devices. Led by the new 6800 platform, the BIG-IP version 9 devices offer greater reliability and accelerated application performance.

According to F5, BIG-IP v9 is the first unified traffic management platform featuring integrated hardware compression to offload expensive HTTP compression cycles. Designed for medium and large enterprises and hosting providers, the new BIG-IP devices feature a new HTTP compression application-specific integrated circuit that reduces server loads by centralizing traffic compression processing functions. According to the vendor, this can result in a 20% improvement in server capacity while improving application and response times. New software optimization provides up to a 50% increase in Level 7 performance.

The BIG-IP Traffic Management Operating System (TM/OS) has been upgraded to deliver improved application performance, with an accelerated mode providing optimized Layer 7 processing up to 110,000 connections/second.

"The BIG-IP product's revolutionary TM/OS architecture, announced four months ago, enables F5 to deliver significant new capabilities and performance enhancements at an industry leading pace," F5 Networks director or product management Jason Needham said in a statement. "As a result, this enables F5 to not only push the performance envelope in terms of speed and scalability, but also address customers' unique application delivery requirements, which are growing in complexity at record rates."

The new 6800 platform adds impressive scalability and throughput to the mix, featuring four gigabit fiber ports, with an overall throughput capacity of 4 gigabits per second. The new 6400 FIPS platform includes heightened security functionality of the most sensitive content. It is designed to meet regulatory requirements specified in the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 2 and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act standards. The 6400 FIPS stores and processes both the Secure Sockets Layer keys and data in a Hardware Secured Module and provides FIPS processing with 8,000 TPS and 1 Gigabit of bulk encryption.