Sarvega introduces first XML router for Web services

Next week at Supercomm, Oakbrook, Ill.-based XML networking company Sarvega will introduce the first XML router, which the company said will bring modern routing concepts to the Web services space.

The Layer-7 router—no oxymoron, said Sarvega president and CEO Christopher Darby—will expand the current point-to-point configurations of most Web services connections today.

“This router will be used to bring anyone-from-anywhere connectivity to the Web services space,” Darby said.

Sarvega has been offering XML (Extensible Markup Language) processor technology as well as firewall, accelerator and gateway technology since 2001. Its XML Speedway and XML Guardian processing and security products run on the company’s proprietary XML EventStream Operating System (XESOS.)

“Our core competency is delivering wire-speed XML processing in the network,” Darby said. “By leveraging that competency we are announcing the world’s first XML router.”

 XML routing offers a more user-friendly method to create Web services. “You don’t have to have a pre-conceived notion of who is on the other end in order to deploy it,” Darby said.

Sarvega also hopes it XML router will get Web services out of its intra-enterprise mode and into wider circulation. “We think this network fabric will allow it to become what has been touted for a while—a federated application of service offering.”

Darby expects the routers will be more for edge devices or deployed on points-of-presence rather than in a Class 5 central office environment, and will allow for easier premium service creation because of the routing decisions it makes based not on packet header information but the text-based language of XML.

“We’re not trying to replace the routing infrastructure at the lower layers. This is a cooperative and complementary product set that interworks with the lower layers,” said Girish Juneja, co-founder and senior vice president of product management at Sarvega.

The router scales up to tens of thousands of publishers and subscribers and processes at 1Gbps line speeds. “Where we play at the edges of the network, the speed required is typically around that range,” Juneja said.

Sarvega will present the XML router at booth #10028 at Supercomm '04.