One of the primary threat vectors that defines a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a volumetric flood of data that overwhelms a target. Among the ways to deal with a volumetric DDoS is a hardware appliance that can scale to handle the DDoS traffic, which is where A10 Networks fits in.
A10 Networks announced a new group of Thunder Threat Protect System (TPS) appliances on October 12, providing up to 300 Gbps of DDoS protection in a single box. The top-end device is the new Thunder 14045, which is a 3 RU (rack unit) appliance powered by four 18-core Intel Xeon processors.
On the network interface side, the 14045 can support four 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports. Going a step further, multiple Thunder TPS 14045 appliances can be clustered together to provide a whopping 2.4 Tbps of DDoS protection.
To date, the largest DDoS attacks ever publicly reported came on September 20 and 21 with a 665 Gbps attack against security blogger Brian Krebs and a 799 Gbps attack against internet service provider OVH.
The idea of providing 1 Terabit per second or more of DDoS protection is not a new one for A10. In January 2014, the company announced its Thunder 6435 TPS, which has 155 Gbps of capacity in one box and can be clustered up to 1 Tbps.
While the TPS 14045 appliance is the top-end Thunder appliance and is intended for use by cloud and internet service providers, A10 is also updating its product portfolio with mid-tier solutions as well.
The Thunder 840 TPS, provides up to 2Gbps of DDoS protection and includes five 1 gigabit Ethernet ports in a one RU box. A10 now also provides virtual machine-based DDoS appliances that can run on VMware and Microsoft hypervisors.
“We’re helping service providers and enterprises fight back against the rising DDoS onslaught so they can be proactive, not reactive,” Raj Jalan, CTO of A10 Networks, said in a statement. “True multi-vector, always-on protection helps them ensure uptime, exceed operational readiness and productivity, and avoid brand damage due to costly outages.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Networking Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist
