VPN at layer 2 from InfoGuard

Swiss company InfoGuard has released a series of encryption devices which encrypt data traffic between company and bank sites at OSI network stack layer 2. The EGM-series devices achieve transfer speeds of between 20 and 100 Mbit/s. The EGM1 devices are even faster, achieving speeds of between 200 and 1000 Mbit/s. The devices establish point-to-point, point-to-multipoint or multipoint-to-multipoint Ethernet connections.

According to the company, this type of encryption is, particularly for many small network packets (< 64 bytes), faster than conventional VPNs (IPsec), which run at network layer 3, require a large amount of processing time for encryption and often achieve only about 50 per cent of the line speed. The devices transport unicast, multicast and broadcast traffic with QoS (quality of service) via VLAN IDs or IEEE 802.1q priority bits. They utilise the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for encryption, with 256 or 128 bit keys, with automatic session key renewal – and reportedly with no dropped connections. The Infoguard devices can be managed and configured locally via a PC GUI or over a network using SSH. The EGM devices are already available to purchase at 7,735 euros for the 20 Mbit version or 21,900 euros for the 100 Mbit.

(trk)