PrevenTier DDoS Protection Los Angeles CA

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Originally published at Internet.com

Managed hosting services firm Rackspace has joined forces with Arbor Networks and Riverhead Networks to build a three-tier security system called PrevenTier for identifying and mitigating the effects of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Rackspace contributes its own Exterminator software for intrusion detection and attack prevention; Arbor Networks contributed the Peakflow traffic analysis and anomaly detection platform; and Riverhead offers Guard for traffic analysis, blocking and filtering.

"The development of this service came about because until recently, there was not a whole lot anyone could do to mitigate DDoS attacks short of taking down the site or adding horsepower to the site could continue to serve pages," says Paul Froutan, vice president of engineering with Rackspace. "But now the attacks have become so powerful, it's impossible to live through them. We were looking for a solution to help our customers continue to do business and not be taken down by DDoS attack."

Rackspace began working with suppliers of DDoS protection devices two years ago, and specifically with beta testing the Arbor and Riverhead products one year ago.

"We combined the three with proprietary connectors to let all the systems work concurrently and exchange information," he says.

Capable of handling more than 30 million packets per second, PrevenTier examines each incoming packet for signs of malicious activity. Peakflow searches for anomalies on a network-wide basis; it creates a profile of the server's usual traffic then searches for deviations. If an anomaly is detected, a report is provided and corrective action identified. If the activity is malicious, traffic is rerouted through the Riverhead Guard engine for mitigation. Legitimate traffic is forwarded to the destination server which continues to serve clients.

During testing, the product successfully detected and blocked several DDoS attacks, Froutan says. "Many time, the customers never know they got attacked," he says.

PrevenTier is priced at $350/month for the first server; the price per server drops as more servers are added. Most Rackspace customers have three to six servers.