Solution Partner:

Cavium Networks is a worldwide leader in security, network services and embedded processor solutions. Cavium Networks' award-winning NITROX and MIPS64-based OCTEON families of processors and accelerator boards offer flexible, scalable and highly integrated solutions delivering 50Mbps to 10Gbps performance. The company's products are integrated into a wide range of networking equipment that include routers, gateways, network appliances, content switches, wireless LAN access/aggregation points, servers and storage networking devices. Cavium Networks is headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley in Mountain View, CA with development centers in Marlboro, MA and Hyderabad, India. For enquiries, please email

Download Case Study

The Customer and its Business Challenges

The Customer: A global provider of network security solutions.

The Business Challenges: The lines between networking equipment segments and security equipment segments are blurring fast. The reason is simple: Enterprise IT managers in highly-regulated verticals like banking and finance, defense and security, with flourishing branch offices increasingly need to optimize their TCO. Consolidating security optimization and routing into the same box at the network gateway as well as for the whole infrastructure is one cost-effective solution.

Time to market (TTM) is however critical as integrated networking security hybrids mature. Major network equipment providers have entered the security space to offer integrated or route-managed security with other LAN/WAN connectivity functionalities.

To meet this TTM challenge and retain a foothold in the fast-collapsing networking and security pie, the Customer had to avoid developing networking features from scratch. They didn't want their resources and expertise on leading edge security solutions diluted and dispersed for catching up to more established networking solutions. At the same time, they were looking for comprehensive networking features that were future-proof and would be applicable to multiple hardware range to optimize performance scalability and costs.

Product Development Requirements

The Customer decided on a strategic product roadmap to develop a full range of new generation network security gateways based on key criteria of:

Including a comprehensive set of pre-integrated networking protocols Quick and seamless integration with their proprietary UTM software Ported over a range of 3 products, including the latest high-performing multi-core MIPS64 architecture to separate forwarding treatments and enhance performance, as well as an X86 platform

The Solution

The Customer chose to use 6WINDGate™ SDS software suite and the Cavium Networks' OCTEON™ CN38XX Multi-core MIPS64 processors. The solution synergy between the two essentially facilitated fast product design and development:

6WINDGate™ software integrates with OCTEON SDK and runs on the OCTEON evaluation boards Cavium Networks' provided fast path hardware acceleration and software correspond to the well-defined APIs of 6WINDGate™

As a result, the Customer is able to reduce overall development cycle by gaining on:

A complete set of field-proven IP features pre-integrated and validated on a scalable and optimized processor architecture The ability to develop several product lines founded on the same software and processor, due to OCTEON's superior scalability An open software architecture incorporating XML-based management system for fast software integration and configuration with the Customer's UTM software The capacity to scale up on performance as well as service evolution by integrating Ethernet and interfaces for WLAN or xDSL, as well as additional security applications