StillSecure has decided to put its money where its mouth is and port an application to the Cisco Integrated Services Router. Cisco recently announced that the ISR can be made into a Linux application server with the addition of a Cisco Application eXtension Platform (AXP) blade card.

A little over a week ago, a post on Cisco Subnet sparked a war of words between Don Marti on LinuxWorld and Alan Shimel at StillSecure. Marti called the router-turned-Linux-app-server  "the dumbest networking vendor idea since Network Access Control." Alan Shimel, chief strategy officer at StillSecure disagreed and took Marti to task.

But it wasn't just words on Shimel's part. StillSecure will port the open-source tool Corbia to the ISR. Cobia is the open-source portion of the commercial software that StillSecure creates. Corbia contains routing, security, and administrative systems needed to implement a network on an x86 server or virtual server. The creators of Corbia bill it as a "Unified Network Platform" and while they've trademarked that phrase, the software is free. On the network side, Corbia offers routing and DHCP and on the security side it includes a firewall and intrusion detection/prevention. Other modules (such as administration) also exist. AXP blade users who implement Corbia will obviously also have access to any other tools the Corbia community creates.

Corbia's routing module would obviously not be unnecessary for the ISR. But more interesting, it is tools just like Corbia that Cisco's Linux AXP blade would be hoping to compete with. Remote offices and small businesses are consolidating routers/edge security appliances onto one box, and that box is more often than not a low-cost commodity server, rather than expensive specialty hardware from a router maker. StillSecure will see if there's a market for the latter. Shimel obviously thinks so,

"The future has no room for standalone routers," he said. Many would agree. The question really is, on what hardware will these so-called "God Boxes" that do everything be built? StillSecure did not say in its press release when Corbia for ISR would be available.

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