People worried about the security of the network cables may be interested to hear that European researchers are developing the world's first optical firewall.
The new device will be capable of analysing data on a fibre optic network at speeds of up to 40 gigabits per second, saving the internet from security bottlenecks, the researchers claim.
As the demand for data-intensive services like video-on-demand increases and space in server cabinets and server racks becomes more of a premium, the need to improve the speed data is filtered is growing, the developers claim.
"The amount of data being transmitted can and will get much higher as data-intensive services become more commonplace," said Graeme Maxwell, the vice-president for integration technologies at CIP Technologies in the UK.
He added that even data from mobile phones ends up on fibre opticcables.
Meanwhile, according to Market Watch, internet security firm Fortinet has set new data filtering records with its latest firewall the FortiGate-620B.
Last Updated: 12/11/2008 17:04
Networking News Feed 
0845 2000 256 - 
0845 2000 257