RioRey RX1810: how to put a firewall through hell

As we mentioned before, the market for DDoS protection was largely unknown to us. We would have to base our decision on specifications and sales and marketing material, but fortunately enough our suppliers already have the necessary knowledge and experience. One of our suppliers had just taken its chance with RioRey, a company presenting itself as being 'the DDoS specialist'.

At the time of writing, RioRey offers three series of DDoS appliances. The RE series consists of two reasonably affordable 1U models and is meant to be used with smaller websites. Right above that, there is the RX series offering three 2U models. The highest level consists of the RG: a 7U housing for a maximum of eight blades with a 10Gbit connection each.

The major differences between the RE and RX series are the amounts of computing power and memory. Compared to the RE series, the RX offers more redundancy and sufficient computing power to support IPv6.

All models mentioned above are based on the same RIOS software. This is a adapted version of Linux containing, of course, a software layer for DDoS protection. Among others, there are separate algorithms for TCP, HTTP, UDP and ICMP traffic. The software continuously monitors whether and to what extent traffic has changed during the past few minutes; if any significant change in traffic patterns is detected action is undertaken. The reaction time for a DDoS attack is therefore usually around two minutes.

In addition to redundancy, the RX series offers a 'hardware bypass circuit' that makes sure that, when the service is down, the connection meant to protect the appliance keeps on functioning. This functionality is optionally available for the RE models.

Unfortunately, RioRey has hidden most of its website behind a login, making it somewhat difficult to obtain information about the appliances. Therefore we here provide a brief overview of the most important features of the various models.

The prices of the models mainly depend on the chosen network connection. In the case of the RE models one has to think of the price you pay for a somewhat higher end dual processor server; the RX series costs roughly the same amount of money as a more expensive dual processor and a cheaper quad processor computer. For exact prices, we recommend contacting a distributor. For the Netherlands this is Quanza Engineering.