The VPN Accelerator Card (VAC) for the Cisco Secure PIX Firewall series provides high-performance, tunneling and encryption services suitable for site-to-site and remote access applications. This hardware-based VPN accelerator is optimized to handle the repetitive but voluminous mathematical functions required for IPsec. Offloading encryption functions to the card not only improve IPsec encryption processing, but also maintain high-end firewall performance. As an integral component of the Cisco virtual private network (VPN) solution, the VPN Accelerator Card provides platform scalability and security while working seamlessly with services necessary for successful VPN deployments - encryption, tunneling, and firewall.