Telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent and network monitoring and security offerings provider Arbor Networks have joined forces to combat the increasing threat of ‘distributed denial-of-service’ (DDoS) attacks.

By integrating Arbor’s Threat Management System (TMS) software into Alcatel-Lucent’s IP routers (wherever they are located in a given network) the DDoS attacks can be identified and handled with at the edge of the cloud, closer to the location of the attack, which is a much more effective and less costly approach.

With the combined offering, service providers can own cloud networks and can make services more resilient and also enables them to offer a cloud-based service to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks on the networks of their enterprise customers.

In addition, service providers can deliver denial-of-service ‘scrubbing’ as a cloud-based service from the same platform as virtual private network (VPN) and business Internet services, with minimal incremental investment.

Alcatel-Lucent has integrated Arbor Networks TMS capabilities in the same integrated service adapter platform to allow service providers to consolidate and converge their infrastructure, thus reducing CAPEX and OPEX.

Alcatel-Lucent IP Service Router Product Unit vice-president and general manager Kevin Macaluso said denial-of-service attacks are a rapidly growing problem in service provider and Enterprise networks today.

"By integrating Arbor’s TMS into our IP service routers, we’re essentially moving the defensive perimeter further out to the ‘edge’ of the service provider’s network – in effect stopping criminals at the border."

Arbor Networks president Colin Doherty said more than sixty service providers offer some sort of clean pipe managed service built off the Arbor platform.

"By embedding our Threat Management System software into the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router, these service providers can scale their DDoS traffic cleaning service to capitalize on accelerating enterprise demand for cloud-based protection from DDoS attacks," said Doherty.