Mistletoe Technologies makes chips customized for firewall/VPN gear that are taking hold and could result in faster and cheaper VPN appliances.

In particular, its RDX chips are designed to support gigabit speeds so you can expect to see more gigabit firewall/VPN gear at affordable prices.

Mistletoe announced that a company called freedom9 is now using the chips in its freeGuard Blaze firewall/VPN appliances, which are used mainly by academic institutions.

The devices can crank out 2Gbps firewall/VPN protection using Triple-DES or AES, and boasts low power consumption - less than 25 Watts. The freeGuard gear will be available at the end of November.

The advantage of inexpensive high-speed firewalls is that they offer headroom to many businesses that may want to significantly increase traffic in and out of corporate boundaries by using e-commerce and VoIP, both of which put a drain on firewalls.

Faster firewalls that may be oversized for actual network traffic can also offer a buffer against denial-of-service attacks that try to overwhelm firewall capacity. The gear would have more time to respond to an attack before crashing.

Mistletoe hasn't announced any other companies to which it is selling its RDX chips, but it's a safe bet it will have other customers if it doesn't already. That can only mean that the price of faster firewall/VPN gear will be dropping somewhat more over time. Keep a lookout for such bargains.

Tim Greene is senior editor at Network World.