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Re: ipsec NICs?
On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, Henry Spencer wrote:
> 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.
>
The new 3Com 3CR9990 10/100 Ethernet NIC supports Windows 2000
IPSec offload at rates of up 90 megabits/sec when using ESP with
3DES+MD5 and it costs between $120-140. IPSec crypto offloading to
a NIC also significantly improves the host system CPU utilization when
doing 3DES. We have seen CPU utilization drop from over 80% to 20%
when Windows 2000 ESP-3DES is offloaded to the 3CR9990 NIC.
Jeff Fowler
jeff_fowler@3com.com
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