Marconi Demos 10-Gig Encryption

PITTSBURGH -- Marconi Corporation plc (London: MONI), through its U.S. subsidiary, Marconi Communications Federal, Inc., today announced it recently proved publicly that IP and ATM data can be encrypted at a line rate of 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps), the fastest speed possible with commercially available technology. Marconi believes it is the principal telecommunications equipment vendor supporting this immediately deployable solution for high-speed encryption of IP, Frame Relay, TDM (Time Division Multiplexing), or ATM traffic over a next-generation packet network.

The demonstration included Marconi's BXR(TM)-48000 480 Gbps (960 Gbps half-duplex) multiservice switch-router and its 10 Gbps ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) interface interoperating with the General Dynamics UltraFastlane KG-75A encryptor. In the demonstration, Marconi supported encryption of 10 Gbps of IP (Internet Protocol) traffic over ATM, 10 Gbps of pure ATM traffic, and the simultaneous encrypted transport of 5 Gbps of IP and 5 Gbps of ATM, to show the feasibility of immediately deploying a high-speed yet secure, next-generation network transporting legacy and IP applications.

"Maintaining communications security and performance at the same time in government networks demands exceptional handling of high-speed streams. Marconi's BXR-48000 not only has the switching performance and high availability features needed for both public carrier and military-grade applications, it also has a unique ability to support line-rate encryption at 10 Gbps, the sweet spot in per-wavelength traffic capacity," said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corporation. "Encrypting and decrypting high-speed flows offers government buyers a more effective means of insuring communications security, simplifying key management and also insuring no security compromises occur during network path rerouting or topology changes."

Uses for 10 Gbps encryption include safeguarding the mission-critical, real-time applications and services required for secure government communications across the world. Demands on a global communications grid include secure, high-speed transport of encrypted surveillance data, real-time control and harvest of data from networked military and intelligence assets such as the Global Hawk and Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), transport of high-definition video steams, distributed supercomputing, and the integration of large storage files with real-time, desktop video telephony, including multi-person and multi-site conferencing for collaborative decision-making. These applications require multi-gigabit streams of data with low latency, Quality of Service and low jitter, which, in most cases, must be protected by the most secure Type 1 (military grade) encryption algorithms.

"With Marconi, government customers have a reliable partner they know and trust to use the best commercial practices to expand their communications capabilities, embracing the next generation of networking technology without risking the loss of mission-critical functionality," said Gerry Kolosvary, president, Marconi Communications Federal, Inc. "Technology that supports the networking requirements for national defense applications should be battle- tested and mature before deployment. Marconi is able to support the fastest military-grade encryption technology over an all-packet infrastructure, thereby delivering a secure, scalable and predictable strategy for converging voice, video and data in a practical, immediately deployable solution."

At present, only the ATM transport protocol will support the encryption of IP packet and TDM traffic at the highest speed currently possible, which is 10 Gbps. IP traffic over Ethernet is limited to encryption rates of 100 megabits per second, a speed similar to desktop PC interconnectivity. Although Marconi also supports 100 Mbps encryption, such a relatively slow speed of encryption significantly restricts the applications that can be securely transported over a network.

Marconi's support for 10 Gbps encryption enhances its assured networking solutions, augmented by other recent network security news. Marconi last month announced support of Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) for Simple Network Management Protocol, version 3, used by network operators -- particularly operators in the U.S. Federal government -- to encrypt and secure the messages that manage network elements.

Marconi's support for 3DES for SNMPv3 adds to its broad range of support for management plane security features -- including user authentication and registration protocols such as RADIUS, SecurID, and Kerberos -- and control plane security features such as MD5 Authentication and AINI (ATM Inter-Network Interface). Marconi's support for such high levels of encryption and network security has helped it sell the BXR-48000 switch-router and 10 Gbps ATM interface to the U.S. Department of Defense,

Marconi Corp. plc