NetWORLD Connections, Inc., based in Salt Lake City is
an Internet service provider and Web hosting service. NetWORLD needed find a
better way to deal with the massive amount of data needing protection from
Internet hackers. They also needed to guarantee secure transaction
processing for the strictly audited and government-regulated information.
The processing of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) transactions for site
authentication and 128-bit encryption for online e-commerce was consuming a
large percentage of NetWORLD's secure server's capacity. The burden of
processing secure processing when secure keys were loaded into the Windows
NT IIS server was quickly overwhelming the server, causing it to perform at
least 75 percent slower than it did without encryption. Based on this type
of Windows NT IIS encryption solution, the server couldn't handle more than
one or two users at a time.
NetWORLD installed the SonicWALL SSL Accelerator to
offload the burden of SSL encryption processing from the Web server. By
loading secure keys into the EPROM of SonicWALL SSL Accelerator, all
encryption and decryption are performed by the card, leaving the Web
server's processor free to perform intensive Web operations.
NetWORLD put the SonicWALL SSL Accelerator to the test.
"At this point we're using one SonicWALL SSL Accelerator on one Windows NT
server set up to support from 50 to 100 simultaneous logons - that more than
adequately supports what we need for security processing," says Kip Massey,
senior Web administrator at NetWORLD.
NetWORLD's initial testing of the SonicWALL SSL
Accelerator with 15 simultaneous users, showed a server and Web site
performance increase of 50 times. "The minute we installed the card, we
couldn't believe the incredible speed boost. It was as if there was no
encryption being performed at all," says Massey.
NetWORLD further tested the card with 40 simultaneous
users to see if it could slow down the card. "Actually, all we could do was
slow down the server," continued Massey. "Testing it against our current
needs, I don't believe we're anywhere near reaching the limit of the
SonicWALL SSL Accelerator - we've actually reached the limit of the server
instead."
As new servers are added to the NetWORLD network, the
SonicWALL SSL solution makes expansion easy since all SSL encryption data is
contained on the card, eliminating the need to program all secure keys and
other encryption information into the server. Support for 10/100 Mbps
Ethernet provides high-speed network performance, which is also important to
NetWORLD. "We've been running the card in full duplex at 100 Mbps speeds and
it works great," says Massey.
"Finding a solution like this for an affordable price
is what we like best about the SonicWALL SSL Accelerator," says Massey.
"Before the SonicWALL solution, the only choice available was an expensive
$7,000 to $10,000 server. When you look at the difference in price, we saved
close to 75 percent with the SonicWALL SSL solution - and nothing can beat
that."
NetWORLD Connections
