Tasman aims at beating Cisco with lower-cost router

Tasman Networks this week will debut a router line aimed at matching Cisco’s Integrated Services Routers on performance and beating them on price.

Tasman’s 3120 Converged Services Router includes basic T-1 WAN routing connectivity with hardware-accelerated services including IPSec VPN, firewall and VoIP QoS features. Like Cisco’s ISR line, the 3120 integrates these features in application-specific hardware, but Tasman says it delivers the product at 33% to 50% lower cost than Cisco. The 3120 routers are targeted to compete with Cisco’s ISR 2800 and 3800 series devices.

The router comes in several configurations, including four, eight or 16 ports of T-1 connectivity, or single or dual DS3 port configurations. Each device comes with a stateful packet inspection firewall offloaded to its own processor, IPSec VPN with hardware-accelerated encryption and Type of Service and Class of Service (TOS and COS) traffic prioritization features.

“If a router offers all these services, it should be able to run them all simultaneously,” said Tasman CEO Paul Smith. “We’ve built sufficient headroom [into the 3120] so that VPN, firewall, traffic filters, T-1 bonding can all be turned on and while maintaining full-wire speed with traffic of every packet size.”

If the Tasman brand is unfamiliar, there is a reason. The company sells mostly to carriers which use the boxes as customer premise equipment (CPE) as part of a managed service or for basic network connectivity. These carriers usually slap their own brand on the device. Another large chunk of Tasman’s sales go to network equipment vendors which re-brand the devices as well.

Pricing for the 3120 ranges from $6,400 to $12,900, depending on the configuration. The router is available now.