Hitachi Cable, Ltd. has confirmed the compatibility of its Apresia*1 Ethernet*2 switch with the RTX1100 and RTX1500 Yamaha routers for small- and medium-sized networks, from Yamaha Corporation (headquarters: Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture; President & Representative Director: Shuji Ito; "Yamaha" hereafter). As a result, Hitachi Cable has added new solutions primarily targeted at small- and medium-sized networks to its line of Apresia security solutions.

In recent years, awareness of issues related to the security of corporate information networks has increased. In addition to measures to protect a company's networks from external attacks, the importance of ensuring network security for connections made inside the company, which up to now have generally been considered safe, is increasing as well, in response to factors such as the spread of viruses via the connection of personal computers or other devices for which sufficient security measures have not been taken, leakage of information via unauthorized users, and unauthorized network use. Although measures to combat such security risks are already progressing centered on government and major corporate users, recently the security needs of small- and medium-sized offices and other facilities have been increasing as well.

In the past, ensuring security from internal connections to a network was conducted using measures such as user authentication and quarantine employing authentication servers and other equipment. However, such systems are relatively expensive, a significant barrier to adoption by small- and medium-sized offices.

In light of such circumstances, Hitachi Cable and Yamaha have developed new security solutions primarily for small- and medium-sized networks, by confirming the compatibility of the DHCP-snooping feature implemented by Hitachi Cable's Apresia switch with the DHCP client authentication feature, which is one of the DHCP server functions implemented by Yamaha's RTX1100 and RTX1500.

Dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) refers to a protocol for assigning automatically, with each connection, the IP addresses needed by personal computers and other devices to connect to a network. By registering the MAC address*3 of a personal computer or other device to a DHCP server in advance, it is possible to make a network more secure by not assigning IP addresses to unregistered devices, thus not allowing them to connect to the network. However, such measures are inadequate in some areas, for reasons such as the fact that a user may be able to connect to the network by assigning a fixed IP address to the client.

To resolve such issues, Hitachi Cable and Yamaha have developed stronger security measures that can exclude clients with fixed IP addresses and prohibit network connections by clients that have not been registered in advance. They do so by combining the DHCP-snooping function implemented*4 by Apresia to exclude clients with fixed IP addresses using the DHCP client-authentication function*5 in the RTX1100 and the RTX1500. Since the DHCP-snooping function is a standard Apresia function, it can be adopted as a relatively low-cost solution for excluding unauthorized clients even in small- and medium-sized networks, without requiring additional licensing fees or other extra costs.

Hitachi Cable plans to continue collaborating with its partners to enhance its lineup of security solutions, as well as taking advantage of sales channels opened through its Apresia sales partners to further expand its share of the Ethernet switch market for enterprises and service providers.

*1	Apresia is a registered trademark of Hitachi Cable, Ltd. in Japan.
*2	Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox Corporation.
*3	A MAC address is a unique number assigned to each network interface card (NIC). In principle, worldwide no two NICs share an identical MAC address.
*4	The DHCP-snooping function is implemented in the Apresia 2100/3100/3200/4200 series. Future plans call for implementing this function in the Apresia 4300 series as well.
*5	The DHCP client authentication function can be used with RTX1100 and RTX1500 firmware Rev. 8.03.37 and later. Future plans call for implementing this function in the RT107e and the RTX3000 as well.