Avanex Joins Consortium to Develop a Photonic Firewall

Avanex Corp. a Fremont, Calif.-based maker of fiber optic-based products, announced today it has joined a consortium that has received EU funding of €2 million for a three-year project to develop a reconfigurable photonic firewall subsystem-on-a-chip (SOAC). The project -- WISDOM, for Wirespeed Security Domains Using Optical Monitoring -- includes optical network-related organizations involved in research (Tyndall National Institute and The Foundation for Research and Technology, Hellas, of Crete, Greece), component and subsystem fabrication (Center for Integrated Photonics, of Suffolk England, project coordinator), OEM system design and manufacturing (Avanex) and telecommunications network operation (BT). WISDOM is developing a proof-of-concept demonstration for a reconfigurable photonic firewall SOAC to allow optical data inspection using security algorithms optimized for very high-speed operation in the optical domain. The optical processing submodules will perform bit pattern recognition as input to a range of security algorithms, based on existing research in network intrusion detection systems. The optical processing will be based on all-optical logic gates using semiconductor optical amplifiers as nonlinear elements. The necessary firmware and protocols to operate the network devices will also be developed as part of the project, and the network devices will be evaluated on network operator testbeds.