Fortinet focuses on the custom market

Fortinet has been mentioned before in this newsletter as a maker of VPN/firewall appliances that also provide intrusion detection and content filtering. The company is coming out with two new boxes, and from the way Fortinet describes them, perhaps it is more accurate to say Fortinet's equipment perform ID and content filtering, as well as handle firewall and VPN functions.

That is because Fortinet's line of gear is based on the company's FortiASIC, a chip designed to handle the deep packet inspection necessary to perform ID and content filtering. Other vendors started out offering firewalls, then added VPN capabilities and are expanding into other security areas based on their original hardware platforms. These are based on general-purpose processors or general processors in combination with custom chips specifically designed to speed up encryption.

Fortinet came at the problem from the other end, designing its FortiGate equipment with the idea that it would handle multiple security functions that require custom processors.

The latest gear from Fortinet is the FortiGate 3000, which supports a 3G bit/sec firewall if no other applications are running on the box. It supports 300M bit/sec Triple-DES encryption if just the VPN is turned on. The box is available now and costs $30,000.

FortiGate 3000 also performs antivirus screening, content filtering and ID, but the company has yet to come up with a metric for measuring how fast it performs these functions. Which raises an issue: When shopping for such a device, how do you determine how well it would perform overall based on the various loads your network places on it?

If you have any suggestions, please write in.

IPSec VPN alternatives
Network World, 10/28/02

Tim Greene is a senior editor at Network World, covering virtual private networking gear, remote access, core switching and local phone companies. You can reach him at tgreene@nww.com.

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