Fortinet is rolling out five new, faster appliances that include firewall and VPN as well as a host of other security applications for small and midsize businesses.

The Fortigate A-Series devices are the Fortigate-100A, 200A, 300A, 400A and 500A. These devices can be clustered to improve reliability by taking over for one another if one fails and load balancing if both are running.

In addition to firewall and VPN, the devices support virus scanning, intrusion prevention, URL filtering and spam filtering. This new hardware is a follow-on to earlier Fortinet appliances with the same product numbers only without the A designation.

The new boxes are more powerful than the old ones resulting in faster firewall and VPN speeds as well as performance for the other security applications. For example the VPN throughput of the Fortigate-100 is 25M bit/sec and for the Fortigate-100A is 40M bit/sec. The VPN speed of the Fortigate 500 is 90M bit/sec and for the 500A is 150M bit/sec.

The devices have dual WAN ports allowing customers to plug them in to alternate service providers or use separate lines to the same provider to carry different sets of applications. They also have a DMZ port to create a secure network segment for mail and Web servers, for example.

All the new models include a four-port switch, and the 300A, 400A and 500A all support Gigabit Ethernet. The other two support 10/100 Ethernet connections.

The new boxes ship in November and range in price from $1,700 for the Fortigate-100A to $10,000 for the Fortigate-500A.