A10 Networks is announcing two application-acceleration devices that are less costly than their previous models and are intended for smaller data centers that don’t warrant faster, more expensive platforms.

The AX 2000 and AX 2100 devices feature lower throughput at a lower price to fit budgets for data centers with less demanding traffic loads than larger businesses. Part of the tradeoff is they lack Layer 2 and 3 application specific integrated circuits and field programmable gate arrays for traffic allocation.

The devices come in $16,000 less expensive than A10’s former low-end device, the AX2200. The AX2000 costs $16,995 and the AX2100 costs $23,995. Throughput on the AX2000 is 3Gbps and on the AX2100 is 4Gbps. Throughput on the AX2200 is 6Gbps and costs $39,995.

The products are based on a multi-CPU architecture that the company claims gives its new devices twice the throughput of comparable F5 application acceleration gear.

The devices sit between data centers and the rest of the corporate network where they load balance among servers and accelerate applications. They also terminate SSL session with the machines trying to access the servers that the AX gear front-ends in the data center. This frees up the servers from having to tie up CPU cycles by dealing with the SSL sessions themselves.

They are available now.