Fortinet's 3 Gbps Security Appliance

Fortinet breaks the price/speed barrier with a 3 Gbps gateway that costs $19,999. The company's six other security appliances boast lower price points and speeds.

by Paul Desmond of eSecurityPlanet [October 28, 2002]

Fortinet, Inc. this week will announce a new 3 Gbps member of its FortiGate Network Protection Gateway (NPG) family of appliances, which provide a bevy of security services in a single box.

The FortiGate 3000 NPG, like the other seven members of the NPG family, provides antivirus, content filtering, firewall, virtual private network, intrusion detection, and traffic shaping functions. It becomes the new high-end model in a line that ranges up from the FortiGate 50, a 30 Mbps telecommuter, small office/home office device.

The 3000 provides 3 Gbps of firewall throughput, 1 Gbps intrusion detection speeds and 300 Mbps of IPSec VPN throughput with 3DES encryption, says Rick Kagan, vice president of marketing for Fortinet, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif. When using the new federal government AES encryption algorithm, or the older DES standard, the device achieves gigabit throughout, he says.

As for antivirus and content filtering, Fortinet uses an ASIC-based architecture—dubbed the Accelerated Behavior and Content Analysis System (ABACAS)—that the company says can analyze content in real time. Kagan says the NPG family is the only ASIC-based antivirus engine certified by ICSA Labs.

The 3000 NPG comes with three gigabit and three 10/100 Ethernet ports. Users can group ports and assign different security and content filtering policies to each, providing multiple security zones within the enterprise. One port can also be used to link two FortiGate 3000s for redundant operation. The device comes with hot-swappable power supplies and a 20 GB hard drive for storing log data.

The FortiGate 3000 lists for $19,999 and will be available this week.

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