DE-CIX wins patent for anti-DDoS system to protect customers
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DE-CIX wins patent for anti-DDoS system to protect customers

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DE-CIX, the operator of the world’s largest internet exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, has been granted a patent for its new anti-distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) technology, designed to stem attacks targeting its data customers.

The Blackholing Advanced service “revolutionises” the defence against DDoS attacks directly at internet exchanges by using individual filtering mechanisms, said DE-CIX.

“This patented mechanism significantly limits malicious traffic at the transport protocol and port level through fine-grained filtering,” it said.

The patent is valid in Germany and a similar application is pending in the US.

The new service is now available free of charge in a beta version for all DE-CIX customers in Frankfurt, Madrid and New York.

Thomas King, chief technology officer at DE-CIX, said: “The patent granted for the innovative filter mechanisms is a reward for our years of research. In times of increasing DDoS attacks security is an ongoing focus for us and our customers.”

The service gives customers the ability to filter unwanted DDoS traffic at the transport protocol and port level with fine granularity, limiting harmful data throughput. Based on this filtering, traffic is either discarded or appropriately limited to protect critical infrastructures on the internet from DDoS attacks.

The fact that DDoS data traffic can not only be blocked but also limited in terms of data throughput, means that it is possible to investigate the DDoS attack further in order to initiate appropriate counter-measures.

Together with the DE-CIX Blackholing dashboard, this enables precise and informed mitigation of DDoS attacks to completely eliminate the unwanted traffic only, DE-CIX said.

Standard Blackholing Advanced is free of charge for DE-CIX customers and includes numerous preset filters. A higher-end version, which is subject to a charge, will offer flexibly customisable filters that can be activated directly by the customer.

DE-CIX provides peering and interconnection services from 28 locations in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America.

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