128 Technology: Reinventing Routers in Software

An Intellyx Brain Candy Brief

128 Technology pulls no punches with its tagline: “The Internet is broken. We’re here to fix it.” The core weakness the company is targeting is in the lowly router, which has been sending TCP/IP packets on their way for decades.

The problem with routing, of course, is security. While TCP/IP operates on layers 4 and 3 of the OSI stack, respectively, we’ve always had to layer security on top – with VPN technologies at layers 5 or 6, and SSL and TLS at layer 7.

If only someone would build security directly into the router – and furthermore, implement it as policy-driven and Software-Defined.

That’s what 128 Technology means by “fixing” the Internet. The vendor reinvents the router in software, introducing metadata in the TCP (or UDP) header that creates secure sessions – thus routing sessions instead of packets.

The result is that the vendor is set to disrupt several different markets: any tunneling-based technology like VPNs, SD-WAN products that build an abstraction on top of existing routing technology, and the load balancer market as well, as 128 Technology can distribute traffic as per any policy, not simply per traditional routing tables.

Copyright © Intellyx LLC. Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. To be considered for a Brain Candy article, email us at pr@intellyx.com.

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