Thunder CGN

As network addressing and IPv6 transition architectures can vary greatly across and within an organization, customers need a solution that provides the broadest support for industry standards and meets different IP address and protocol translation requirements simultaneously. 

Thunder CGN enhances your infrastructure security and availability to ensure your applications remain addressable and operate transparently through address translation with multiple mechanisms, such as integrated DDoS protection for NAT pools and application layer gateways (ALG). Built on A10’s market-proven Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS®), Thunder CGN delivers advanced functionality across the broadest range of form factors - container, virtual, bare metal and physical  - with performance up to 370 Gbps.

Carrier-Grade NAT  Deployment Options

Use A10 Thunder CGN to leverage a standardsbased mechanism—carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT), large-scale NAT (LSN), NAT444 or NAT44—to reclaim existing IPv4 space.

Features

Extend IPv4 Investment

Carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) extends the service life of an IPv4 infrastructure, allows time to plan for an IPv6 transition and ultimately reduces cost by avoiding disruptions to business operations.

• Advanced CGNAT Functions

Gain a standards-based mechanism to reclaim existing public IPv4 address space. CGNAT scales networks to overcome IPv4 exhaustion with high-performance, highly transparent address and protocol translation, providing NAT44(4) and ALGs to support network growth and a seamless user experience.

• Millions of Concurrent Sessions

Thunder CGN supports up to 512 million concurrent sessions with unprecedented setup and teardown rates in a compact form factor. Competing solutions require a large-chassis product with multiple application blades to achieve similar performance.

• Advanced Logging

Gain comprehensive logging options to meet stringent compliance and government mandates. Enhance logging detail and use log compression features and techniques, such as deterministic or fixed NAT, to reduce log volumes and logging infrastructure requirements. 

Comprehensive IPv4 to IPv6 Transition Options

Since IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, various solutions are available to achieve full connectivity, regardless of source or destination IP protocol.

• Prevalent Protocol Connectivity

Transition technologies, such as Dual-Stack Lite (DS-Lite) or Light Weight 4 over 6 (Lw4o6), allow network operators to run an IPv6-only core network, while IPv4-only devices can still connect to the internet using softwires (or tunnels) through the IPv6-only infrastructure. IPv6 Rapid Deployment (6rd) provides similar behavior, allowing IPv6 access through an IPv4 network. MAP-T is a translation technique that builds on the Address plus Port method of stateless NAT to translate packets between IPv4 and IPv6 networks.

• IPv6 Client Access to IPv4 Content

IPv6 was not built to be backward compatible with IPv4, complicating the deployment of IPv6 clients. Available with Thunder CGN, NAT64/DNS64 solves this problem by allowing IPv6-only devices to access IPv4-only content.

• Interplay for Phased IPv6 Migration

Deploy transition technologies concurrently to enable a full transition lifecycle. For example, start with CGNAT to mitigate IPv4 address exhaustion and phase in NAT64/DNS64 to enable IPv6 clients to access IPv4 content.

Benefits

• Extend IPv4 Investment
• Manage IPv6 Migration 
• Scale for IoT and BYOD 
• Reduce TCO
• Secure Protection and Availability
• Flexible Deployment Options