"There were very high session counts," says McCullough, declining to name the firewall in use back then. The problem wasn't so much a bandwidth issue as unexpected difficulties with "lots of small packets" associated with reservations and availability requests, plus updated rates, he says.

The situation was hitting a wall in terms of response times for users. Motel 6 management was growing increasingly concerned as it became clear that customers not only got a bad impression from the slow online reservation system, but got fed up and were moving to other hotels. That prompted the Motel 6 IT department to make a review and test of firewalls to replace even the news ones they had, coming up with the Crossbeam X-Series that have grown from supporting 8Gbps throughput to 10 times that and more at present, says McCullough.

"Firewalls have become more central to our infrastructure" than they were just eight years ago, he notes. In one Crossbeam chassis, it's now possible to run 6 independent firewalls, cordoning off internal networks. This configuration also helps cut down on "tap sprawl" related to network ports, reduce risk and not create additional latency, says McCullough. But he acknowledges the multi-application Crossbeam platform, which requires support from three members of the security team, does take time to learn and troubleshoot.

Another older technology, the mainframe, which industry pundits in the 1990s said would be "dead" in five years, is not only still very much alive, but a foundation element in security at many places. Just ask Bridget Dancy, chief information officer at the Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois.