As organizations move to 10 Gigabit Ethernet in their data centres, there’s an increasing demand for faster firewalls.
Fortinet Inc. is the latest to announce product in this range with Monday’s announcement of the upcoming release of the FortiGate 3240C firewall and the 5101C blade for its 5000 series chassis.
Both are aimed at enterprises, service providers and telcos.
“We’re really trying to push the envelope in terms of performance” with these products, said Patrick Bedwell, Fortinet’s vice-president of product marketing.
The 3240C is a 2U-sized appliance that dives up to 40 Gbps of firewall throughput. That doesn’t make it the fastest in the company’s 3000-series appliances. However, it does offer 12 hardware-accelerated 10 GbE ports (two more than the faster 3140B, four more than the slower 3040B) for US$44,995.
A number of organizations are moving or about to move to 10 GbE in the data centre, Bedwell said, so Fortigate wanted to increase the number of 10G ports in this range of firewall.
The FortiGate 5105C blade announced will be the fifth that can fit in the company’s 5140B chassis, which has 14 slots. Fully loaded with the new blade, the chassis can become the fastest IPv6 firewall, Bedwell said, delivering up to 100 Gpbs of throughput.
Aimed at service providers and telcos needing to handle a high number of sessions per second, the blade sells for US$79,995.
Both pieces of equipment will be available for sale in the second quarter.
Bedwell also noted that the Internet Society’s has set June 6 for the “official” world launch of IPv6 for carriers and service providers. A number of organizations and network equipment makers have been testing the protocol, but June 6 has been set as the date many will officially enable it on their systems and gear.
