The VPN Acceleration Module (VAM) for Cisco 7100 Series routers provides high-performance, hardware-assisted encryption, key generation, and compression services suitable for site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) applications. As an integral component of the Cisco Systems SAFE blueprint for security, the VAM provides encryption scalability while working seamlessly with critical site-to-site VPN software services, such as support for routing, quality of service (QoS), multicast and multiprotocol traffic across the VPN, as well as integrating firewall, intrusion detection, and service level validation. This combination of features delivers a best-in-class solution that accommodates the most diverse site-to-site VPN environments. In addition, the VAM provides hardware-assisted compression services where bandwidth conservation may lower network connection costs. These features, combined with VAM support for the broad set of LAN/WAN media and full Layer 3 routing services, ensure the smooth integration of encryption technology into virtually any enterprise or service provider network environment.The VAM supports Data Encryption Standard (DES) or Triple DES (3DES) IPsec encryption at greater than full-duplex DS-3 line rate (up to 145 Mbps) for site-to-site VPNs such as intranets and extranets. Moreover, it supports up to 5000 encrypted tunnels for mixed VPN environments that have both site-to-site and remote access VPN requirements. The VAM also integrates hardware-assisted RSA and IPPCP Layer 3 compression. Accelerating RSA processing speeds tunnel setup and creation time improving overall VPN initialization. And in those environments where bandwidth is costly, the VAM provides hardware-based IP Payload Compression Protocol (IPPCP) Lempel-Ziv-Stac (LZS) processing to compress network traffic before it is encrypted and sent over pay-per-byte WAN connections. The VAM coprocessor architecture offloads all VPN processor-intensive functions from the main route processor, minimizing impact on system resources, thus delivering increased tunneling, encryption, and compression scalability for the most demanding VPN deployments.