Cato Networks, the provider of a popular single-vendor SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) platform, announced on Monday that the company has achieved a new SASE throughput record. The record saw encrypted traffic passing through the platform at an unprecedented rate of 5 Gbps on a single tunnel, while all security inspections remained enabled. The company is now offering what it calls a cloud cross-connect which simplifies multicloud and hybrid-cloud networking, and also provides a high-speed, SLA-backed, direct connection between Cato and almost any cloud provider worldwide.
Gur Shatz, Co-Founder, President, and COO of Cato Networks noted that “Once again, Cato has set the mark for SASE at scale.” He added that pushing the boundary of SASE throughput worldwide is more than an engineering achievement and that it demonstrates how quickly a platform with a cloud-native architecture can make new technology globally available.
As larger companies begin to adopt SASE, higher-capacity connections are required for interconnecting data centres and private clouds. Cato is currently meeting that demand by offering industry-leading support for 5 Gbps throughput on a single, encrypted tunnel without any limitations due to security inspections. This represents a substantial increase over Cato’s previous throughput limit of 3 Gbps per tunnel.
One of the key benefits of Cato’s cloud-native architecture is its ability to scale up performance without requiring any hardware changes. For instance, the company nearly doubled the performance of the Cato Socket, which is Cato’s SD-WAN device for the edge. The increased performance was possible without any requirement for hardware changes because Cato runs the compute-intensive operations that usually degrade edge appliance performance, such as packet encryption/decryption and security inspection, in the Cato Single Pass Processing Engine (SPACE) running over Cato PoPs.
By improving SPACE, all edges connected to the Cato SASE Cloud can gain increased throughput without the need to replace the Cato Socket. However, SASE solutions implemented using virtual machines (VMs) in the cloud or modified web proxies remain limited to under 1 Gbps of throughput for a single tunnel. This limitation forces companies to create and manage several tunnels using their edge appliance while also needing to load-balance their traffic between them, thereby adding another layer of complexity and risk.
Another new offering by Cato is the cross-connect, which will boost multicloud support and allow private, high-speed layer-2 connections between Cato and any other cloud provider connecting to the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX) or Digital Reality. This is an essential feature for multicloud and hybrid-cloud deployments that require reliable, high-throughput connections.
Moreover, the Cato cross-connect provides a private layer-2 connection between a customer’s physical and cloud data centre and Cato for a fixed monthly fee. For added reliability, a high availability (HA) option is also available. In addition to interconnecting enterprise cloud and non-cloud resources, Cato cross-connect also allows Cato channel partners to incorporate Cato SSE 360 in legacy deployments by establishing a network-to-network interface (NNI) into the Cato SASE Cloud. This enables businesses with MPLS or third-party SD-WAN infrastructure to leverage Cato’s SSE capabilities without changing their underlying networks.
To learn more about Cato’s cross-connect and other new features available with the Cato SASE Cloud, visit the company’s website at https://www.catonetworks.com.