The FortiGate appliances are multi-function security appliances served in several flavors, from the FortiGate 50A, targeted primarily to SOHO/ROBO deployments; to the FortiGate 5000 chassis for service providers or large enterprises. Each FortiGate appliance is loaded with the vendor's FortiOS hardened operating system and is hardware accelerated via their proprietary FortiASIC content processing chip.

The appliance is installed at the edge of the network and therefore provides security protection to the network from harmful traffic through the gateway. Multiple types of traffic are scanned and examined, including E-mail (POP3, SMTP, IMAP), Web (HTTP), IM, and FTP.

Specific functions provided by the gear include anti-virus scanning, stateful inspection firewalling, Web content filtering, VPN support (IPSec and SSL), intrusion prevention, anti-spam, traffic shaping, and IM/P2P controls. The appliance data itself (attack patterns, signatures, etc.) is automatically maintained and updated via continuous updates from the vendor's FortiGuard Subscription Services.

The FortiGate 5000 series, in particular, are chassis that are available supporting 2, 5, or 14 total blades. The FortiGate 5000 chassis are AdvancedTCA compliant, consisting of hot-swappable blades, power supplies, fans, etc.

Newly updated with 10 Gig chops, the individual blade offerings for the FortiGate 5000 chassis include the FortiGate-5001A, which provides the security features described above and includes a pair of 10/100/1000 ports; and the FortiSwitch-5003A, which provides clustering functions. A third component, the RTM-XB2 (Rear Transition Module), provides a 10 Gbe communication channel between the FortiGate and FortiSwitch blades and one is required with each FortiGate 5001A blade (though the RTM-XB2 is deployed in rear-slots, and does not, therefore, occupy standard blade slots). The 5001A, in particular, includes a pair of 10/100/1000 ports standard and additionally includes an expansion slot that receives ACM modules (Dual or Single Width, depending on 5001A model), which provide additional ports for the blade in 2 10 Gb, 4 1 Gb, or 8 1 Gb flavors; running the total port count up to 10 maximum per 5001A blade. Performance metrics for the 5001A include support for up to 13 Gb/sec firewall throughput, 7 Gb/sec VPN throughput (both of those numbers are with ACM modules), and support for the definition of up to 500 virtual domains (10 standard).

Other product offerings from the vendor typically complement or extend the FortiGate appliances, including FortiManager (for the centralized management of large numbers of FortiGates), FortiAnalyzer for aggregated analysis and reporting, FortiClient for end point protection, FortiWiFi for WLAN security, and the FortiMail line of appliances for secure E-mail messaging.

The FortiGate appliances are available now; the new 10 Gbse blades are expected by the end of September. Visit the Vendor's Web site for further information.