Folks:

We just implemented a secure mail transport policy on our mail server
which handles over 17,000 accounts. Of course we saw a proportional up
tick in processor overhead to handle the SSL/TLS connections. We are
kicking around the idea of off loading some of the overhead to a
hardware crypto accelerator. Has anyone tried using one of the Sun
boards to do hardware enabled encryption of SSL/TLS connections for
IMAP/POP/SMTP and if so, was it worthwhile?

Thanks,

Jim

On Wed, 19 May 2004 13:41:13 -0400, Jim Noonan wrote:

> Folks:
>
> We just implemented a secure mail transport policy on our mail server
> which handles over 17,000 accounts. Of course we saw a proportional up
> tick in processor overhead to handle the SSL/TLS connections. We are
> kicking around the idea of off loading some of the overhead to a
> hardware crypto accelerator. Has anyone tried using one of the Sun
> boards to do hardware enabled encryption of SSL/TLS connections for
> IMAP/POP/SMTP and if so, was it worthwhile?


Haven't tryioed it myself, but if the mail server users libssl.so
(openssl) it should work. The accelerator should come with a custom
version of openssl 0.9.7c.

Let us know, what you do, if you do get it, I'm confidering the same
setup and could use the feedback. In mase case with Sun TLA Mail server.
(TLA == "Three Letter Acronim", whicever they are using these days. Java
System something should be the current).

Nikola.