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RE: ipsec NICs?
On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Strahm, Bill wrote:
> While crypto acceleration isn't really necessary for WAN cases where people
> are connecting through modems, DSL, T1 speeds, within intranets people are
> wanting to talk at 100Mbit/Sec, soon to be 1Gbit/Sec for servers.
Good point. While I have my doubts about the necessity of that, that's
another battle, and there's no question that people *want* to talk at
those speeds. Filling those pipes is quite a challenge by itself, though.
> In these cases it makes a LOT of sense to throw a cheap crypto accelerator
> at the problem rather than multiple General Purpose CPUs
I guess my general point is, one should remember that fast general-purpose
CPUs are *no longer expensive*. It is quite reasonable to throw CPUs at
problems which would have called for hardware solutions only a few years
ago. A crypto accelerator has to be very fast or very cheap, preferably
both, to be worth the trouble. If it runs at a few tens of megabits and
costs a thousand dollars, you're probably better off with CPUs.
Henry Spencer
henry@spsystems.net
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