Hifn NIC Express DS 4100

Hifn announced the Express DS 4100, the industry’s first advanced Network Interface Card (NIC) that includes bandwidth optimization and security for in-transit data across Local and Wide Area Networks, using the company’s ‘bump in the wire’, FlowThrough technology. 

With the DS 4100, server and storage OEMs can provide three-in-one functionality of network interface, bandwidth optimization and security in a single PCIe slot. Utilizing Hifn’s FlowThrough architecture, the DS 4100 requires no special integration, and the solutions can be delivered without network or application disruptions.  As part of its unique design, the DS 4100 offers the flexibility to turn on one, two or all three functions. The DS 4100 is also optimized for virtualized environments, a key requirement for today’s distributed applications.

Given today’s tight IT budgets, the Hifn Express DS 4100 enables OEMs to provide differentiated cost-saving features in a compliance-ready solution. By offloading capacity optimization and security onto an in-line GigE PCIe card, Hifn has preserved the system CPU for critical storage applications and eliminated the complexity and integration delays of adding costly external devices, such as link encryptors and WAN accelerators.

“2009 will offer vendors an opportunity to provide non-disruptive solutions that deliver better utilization of resources and improves product efficiency,” said Benjamin S. Woo, Vice President, Enterprise Storage Systems at IDC. “With the DS 4100 announcement, Hifn continues to address the need for highly-efficient, cost-effective solutions that solve the deluge of data customers continue to experience. The next wave of opportunity will leverage these solutions to enable applications like Cloud Services, which can deliver higher ROI for customers.”

The Express DS 4100 can reduce costly bandwidth requirements by 50%, and slashes remote replication and backup time, with a power consumption profile that is a small fraction of what would be required to power multiple appliances to accomplish the same tasks. Hifn’s Express DS 4100 is an advanced NIC with dual Gigabit Ethernet connections – either copper or optical fibre — that automatically offloads I/O overhead in virtualization applications, and offloads compression and data security processes, providing three distinct functions via a single PCIe slot. The innovative design uses Hifn’s patent-pending FlowThrough processor architecture to deliver these functions transparently with low latency by performing a full offload of all security and optimization operations, including IPsec and IPComp processing; SRTP; Internet Key Exchange (IKE); IP, TCP and UDP checksum operations.  

“The DS 4100 enables OEMs to provide products that can send twice the amount of data across the LAN or WAN without their customers having to add extra appliances or pay for more bandwidth,” said Mike Goldgof, Vice President of Marketing at Hifn. “For customers that need more network capacity, the DS 4100 provides a new cost-effective way to double the throughput while also seamlessly adding security for compliance and piece of mind.”

The DS 4100 extends Hifn’s leadership in hardware-accelerated compression cards to bandwidth optimization applications. The DS 4100 also leverages Hifn’s encryption expertise to resolve the problem of data transfers over unsecured data networks.  

Pricing and Availability    
Samples of the Hifn Express DS 4100 will be available this quarter with general availability in Q2. Pricing for the DS 4100 is $395 in OEM volume quantities. The Express DS 4100 includes full Linux and Windows Server 2003 and 2008 software and driver support now with additional software support slated for future releases.