Fortinet adds features, compromises in FortiGate line

Company: Fortinet

Product: FortiGate-3600

www.fortigate.com

As the maker of a unified threat management device, Fortinet has packed an amazing number of features into the FortiGate line at an equally attractive price point. That packaging involved some compromises, and the network manager looking for an enterprise-class IPS will not be satisfied with the FortiGate-3600. Problems in configuration, documentation, operation, along with weak forensics, reporting and alerting make the FortiGate a poor choice as a pure-play IPS. 

FortiGate has a better sweet spot: the branch office requiring moderate protection. Although we focused on signatures, FortiGate has a modest set of protocol-anomaly tools that don’t have the same issues. For the network manager looking to add some branch-office style basic IPS on top of firewall rules and antivirus scanning, FortiGate is an attractive package.

The FortiGate performed well in baseline tests handling TCP and UDP traffic, but rates plummeted and latency rose when we subjected the system to attack. Under heaviest attack, forwarding rates dropped down to zero for part of our test.

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