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Brief History of Interop and ShowNet

The Interop Tokyo 2018 Best of Show Awards are presented to the most outstanding products and services for the year, as judged by prestigious members of the IT industry. A10 is proud to announce that our history of bringing home awards for our innovative network and application security technologies continues unbroken.

This year marked the 25th anniversary of Interop Tokyo, held June 13-15 at Makuhari Messe. This is an event for the IT community to learn about the latest technologies, and A10 Networks has been attending-and winning awards-for many years,

In a “Brief History of the Internet” it notes how the Interop trade show began in 1985, when 5000 engineers from academia and industry gathered in Monterey to validate the interoperability of the emerging internet standard. Their efforts were critical to the development of the internet technologies we use today, and those we will use tomorrow.

I know it works because I saw it at Interop

This phrase has embodied the spirit of Interop since it was first used in 1994. There are a lot of potential methods and theories about how to transfer data over the internet, and Interop is a place to prove it. There, the latest technologies interoperate with each other to form a live demo that is used by all show exhibitors and attendees. This cutting-edge network is called ShowNet.

ShowNet is composed of $80 million worth products and services, and involves over 400 engineers from public and private sectors. A lot of effort, passion, and collaboration goes into every ShowNet.

A10 Participation at Interop Tokyo 2018 and ShowNet

A10 has a long history of proving our latest technology on ShowNet. This year, ShowNet ran the following A10 products:

  • Thunder 14045 TPS provided critical DDoS protection on the external backbone, configured in proactive mode for real-time analysis of every packet.
  • Thunder 7440-11 CFW with 100GE I/F provided carrier grade NAT service with GiFW and application visibility.
  • vThunder ADC provided Global Server Load Balancing for the official Interop website.
  • Harmony Controller 2000 provided management and analytics for application delivery control.

A10 Wins Again at Interop

This year, A10 Networks’ won two Special Awards in the Interop Tokyo 2018 Best of Show Awards. Thunder 7440-11 CFW won in the 5G Category, and Thunder 4435 ADC won in the Enterprise IT Category for its low latency.

interop 2018 best show award

Best of Show Award presentation
Left is Mr. Kazumasa Kobayashi, Project Professor, Keio University, one of the judges who selected A10 as a winner. Right is Mr. Yuichi Kikukawa, A10 Networks Product Marketing Manager for Japan.

Best of Show Award “Special Prize” for 5G Category

The A10 Thunder 7440-11 CFW is a high-end model of the Thunder CFW line of converged network security appliances for service providers and large enterprises. It consolidates the 5G Gi-LAN security functions required by mobile network service providers into a single appliance.

According to the judges, the Thunder 7440-11 CFW was selected for a Best of Show Award in the 5G category for its GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) firewall and Carrier-grade NAT (CGN) functions. In addition, it was selected for its high-performance throughput of over 200 Gbps. The judges added their high expectations that A10 will continue to enhance features according to the demands of Japanese mobile network service providers.

Best of Show Award “Special Prize” in the Enterprise IT Category

The A10 Thunder 4435 ADC for low latency is a high-performance Application Delivery Controller (ADC) that reduces latency and enhances security for High-Frequency Trading in financial markets. It is one of the models of the Thunder ADC line of application delivery controllers featuring Server Load Balancing.

The judges said they chose the Thunder 4435 ADC in the Enterprise IT category for its low-latency load balancing feature. It was especially selected for the FIX protocol used in HFT. The Thunder 4435 ADC features jitter and latency of less than 100 ms of other products on the market. “We felt it embodies a sincere pursuit of performance,” the judges commented.

Interop Awards for A10 Networks

Learn More About A10 Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW)

Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW) consolidates the data center firewall, Gi/SGi firewall, secure web gateway and IPsec site-to-site VPN capabilities into a single solution. Thunder CFW includes all of our Thunder series of features: application delivery controller, carrier grade networking and SSL visibility.

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Mike Thompson
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June 21, 2018

Mike is in the office of the CTO at A10 Networks. As principal architect for application delivery controller (ADC), cloud and security products, Mike is involved with research,… Read More