Abstract

Tolly Group Report #202145 (August 2002) validates Inkra’s Inkra 4000 Virtual Service Switch and its ASIC-based HardWall™ resource-management technology. HardWall isolates each “virtual rack” of services (firewall, load balancing, SSL, VPN, etc.) so every tenant gets dedicated CPU and bandwidth even when hundreds of virtual racks run simultaneously.

Fault isolation. In a test with 100 virtual racks and 950 Mbit/s of aggregate traffic, engineers forced one rack to crash repeatedly; the other nine active racks continued forwarding at full rate with no loss or delay, demonstrating uninterrupted service during failures. HardWall therefore guarantees that a single-rack fault cannot degrade its neighbors.

Traffic governance and burst efficiency. Bandwidth-limiting drills proved each rack obeys its configured ceiling—when traffic exceeded the limit, the rack passed only the allowed rate while others stayed unaffected. Session-limiting tests showed excess UDP sessions were dropped on an oversubscribed rack without impacting the remaining racks. A burst-enabled rack could borrow unused bandwidth up to Gigabit speeds and then automatically relinquish that capacity as other racks came online, confirming dynamic, fair reallocation of surplus resources.

Together, these results confirm that the Inkra 4000’s HardWall delivers deterministic isolation, precise QoS controls, elastic bursting, and hitless resilience—key attributes for carrier-class multi-tenant service switches.

Company History:

Inkra Networks Corp, a Fremont, California-based startup founded in 2000, developed carrier-class systems for internet data centers, focusing on virtualized network and security infrastructure through its Virtual Service Architecture (VSA). The company raised $26.5 million in initial funding and established a Canadian subsidiary for software development. However, it struggled to sustain operations during the early 2000s dot-com bust and telecom market challenges.

By May 2005, Inkra Networks ceased operations and shut down. Its technology assets were sold off, with Cisco Systems acquiring its management system and Nortel Networks purchasing its hardware and some software components. The company’s closure resulted in the layoff of over 100 employees. There is no evidence of Inkra Networks continuing as an independent entity or being revived after this period.