Crossbeam Systems is announcing faster security hardware that can handle the volume of traffic generated across 10Gbps networks in large companies and in service provider networks.

The hardware -- available as blades that fit in existing Crossbeam chassis -- mark the biggest product upgrade for the company in the past five years and underscore the company’s focus on the largest businesses and service providers as customers, says Throop Wilder, the company’s vice president of marketing.

With the new hardware, the company’s X-40, X-45 and X-80 security switches can deliver up to 40Gbps of throughput and support 10Gbps ports, speeds that support heavily used corporate data centers and service provider networks.

The new hardware will help the company compete against Cisco’s Catalyst 6500 series and Juniper ISG and SSG security platforms.

Later this year, Crossbeam plans to release an application processing interface that will let security applications talk to each other to enable better flow management through Crossbeam devices.

Later this year, the company also plans to announce software upgrades that will support full QoS for specified traffic as it passes through the device. Priority traffic will be scanned and pushed through faster than less urgent traffic. This capability will be similar to features recently announced by Juniper.

The new Crossbeam hardware takes the form of three classes of blades: network processor module (NPM-8600); application processor module (APM-8600); and control processor module (CPM-8600).

The NPM preprocesses packets and decides which security applications the packets need to be forwarded to or whether the packets can bypass security applications altogether. The APMs support security applications such as firewalls and intrusion detection. Crossbeam partners with Check Point, IBM Internet Security Systems and Optinet for firewall, intrusion prevention and content filtering, respectively.

The CPM provides a separate control plane that directs traffic through the platform. It stores applications and loads them to the APMs as needed. It also groups like blades into groups. So three application blades could be firewalls all acting the same, with a separate set of blades dedicated to intrusion prevention.

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