The new SSL acceleration modules also offer greater capability: the SRVC-SSL6-1 model has one processor and supports 2,000 new SSL connections per second and 32,000 concurrent SSL connections, whereas the SRVC-SSL6-2 module has two processors and doubles the SSL6-1's performance numbers.

Foundry's SSL module "is a really nice piece," said Matt Philips, vice president of technology at Right Media. Right Media will be adding the module to its Foundry ServerIron 450 switches soon; the company previously had an SSL accelerator on the back-end infrastructure, but it was inflexible and difficult to manage. The new Foundry module will remove that extra management burden and better integrate SSL acceleration with the rest of the network.

Right Media is in the online ad serving business, so it has many short or small connections; it needs raw speed and bandwidth to keep performance levels high. The company uses Foundry's ServerIron 450 switches, and has been using 10 Gigabit Ethernet from the ServerIron 450s to its network core for about a year. The company is now extending 10 Gigabit Ethernet to the Internet cloud, "partly as an investment in building out our infrastructure; we didn't want to have to keep adding 10Gig trunk links over and over," Philips noted.

Currently, Right Media uses the four-slot ServerIron 450 switches with one 10Gb line card and one WSM switching module, and are "now filling that third slot with Foundry's SSL module, and the fourth will be another WSM module," Philips said. "So we'll be doubling our performance for a fraction of the cost of adding another one, and simplifying management."

That kind of flexibility was a key factor in the company's decision to purchase Foundry switches. "Other vendors in this space aren't really modular at all," Philips said.