F5 Networks is wheeling out new hardware that lets more remote users securely connect simultaneously to corporate networks than past iterations of its product.
F5 Networks is wheeling out new hardware that lets more remote users securely connect simultaneously to corporate networks than past iterations of its product.
Called FirePass 4100, the security appliance supports 1,000 simultaneous users, up from 100 users its current Firepass 1000 supports. Firepass 4100 boxes can be clustered together to support up to 10,000 users at one site.
By comparison, Juniper’s largest appliance, the Netscreen-SA 5000, supports 2,500 users per box, and can be clustered. Aventail’s EX-1500 supports 1,000 users in one box, and it is possible to tie only two boxes together.
Supporting a high number of simultaneous sessions is important to Coinstar, a coin-counting kiosk company with 12,000 machines in supermarkets nationwide that need to make connections to corporate headquarters, says Michael Lau, network systems manager for the Bellevue, Wash., company. The kiosks dispense prepaid calling cards and debit cards that require the machine to check authorization with servers at company headquarters, Lau says.
Currently, the coin machines make dial-up connections that are slow and expensive. DSL connections to the Internet in combination with FirePass gear could speed transaction times and reduce the use of expensive direct dial, he says. “We’re looking for a faster way to connect,” he says.
The new FirePass 4100 hardware also supports F5’s TrafficShield application firewall. TrafficShield blocks malicious activity based on policies that define what actions are considered acceptable and unacceptable for each Web application it protects. For instance, a user might be allowed to access a page but be blocked from changing key fields, such as a customer name, to access that customer’s data.
This appliance and software combination is F5’s first TrafficShield product since it bought the technology by acquiring Magnifier. The technology competes most directly with Teros, but features of application firewalls are supported by other vendors, according to Joel Conover, an analyst with Current Analysis. For instance, Check Point’s Web intelligence addresses some of the same types of threats, but also provides a firewall and VPN, he says.
“Depending on what you’re trying to defend against, you’ve got a lot of choices. You have to identify the biggest threat and address it,” he says.
F5’s appliance has four ports, one for connecting to a WAN, one to a local network, and two for connecting to separate virtual LANs as a way to limit resources that user groups can access. The device also includes a separate chip to perform encryption, which can improve performance three to four times vs. its gear without them, the company says.
F5 also is announcing a new version of its FirePass Controller software that runs its Secure Sockets Layer remote-access gear. The new version adds support for Pocket PC and Solaris operating systems. It also simplifies the user interface for defining users group and associating them with authorization to access sets of network resources. So it becomes quicker to define resources for the marketing department by giving them access to defined groups of sales and accounting resources rather than identifying each resource that makes up those two groups.
Base price for TrafficShield 4100 is $40,000. FirePass 4100 costs $25,000. Both are available now.
