DPI processor offers 40Gbit/s wirespeed performance

Cavium Networks launches the NITROX DPI II family of L7 content processors, standalone "bump-in-the-wire" single chip deep packet inspection processors that achieve up to 40Gbit/s of application recognition and protocol analysis performance.

The processors feature the company's on-chip Hyper Finite Automata (HFA) engines and optimized TurboDPI software. They claim to speed time to market for OEMs building equipment for enterprise, data center, 3G & 4G wireless and service provider applications.

The processors can be used in both inline and coprocessor modes. In coprocessor mode it connects over its in-built PCIe interface to offload general purpose processors i.e. x86, MIPs- or PowerPC- based systems that lack such advanced hardware DPI engines. The HFA engines in CN18XX family support highly complex rules and can process millions of rules without any performance impact.

With the advent of cloud-based services, SaaS and social networking all riding over Port 80, the ability to inspect content at wire speed is fast becoming a "must have" feature for many products lines. The complexities of adding just one DPI related application, let alone adding multiple DPI functions has been a daunting task to some customers given the explosive number of rules and rule complexity. DPI solutions from other vendors in the marketplace lack the capability to meet these demanding requirements in both the complexity and number of rules. Now with the HFA technology offered in NITROX DPI II, equipment manufacturers can more easily integrate DPI inline or as a coprocessor to a variety of CPUs to enable a wide array of features such as protocol analysis, application recognition, intrusion prevention, anti-malware protection, URL Filtering, unified threat management, antivirus gateways, subscriber charging, application aware QOS and service level agreements, usage monitoring and preventing denial of service.