Nokia fleshes out top end of IP VPN/firewall range

Nokia has rounded out its IP family of VPN/firewall appliances with a device aimed at high-end sites, such as data centers, that need both high throughput and high availability.

Called IP1260, the device joins Nokia’s range of IP appliances that support Check Point’s VPN-1/Firewall-1 software. The firewall speed for the device tested with large packets is 4.2G bit/sec and the VPN speed with large packets is 360M bit/sec. The VPN speed will be boosted in September when Nokia releases a software upgrade. The upgrade will also boost the number of new TCP connections per second from the current 7,400 to 30,000.

High availability features include dual power supplies, hard drives, fans and interface cards that can be swapped without shutting down the unit. It also supports virtual router redundancy protocol (VRRP), which allow several units to be plugged together for better reliability.

The hardware is rack mountable and includes four 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet ports as part of the chassis with room for eight more. It can also support up to eight 1G-bit/sec Ethernet ports.

The device supports virtual LANs, enabling users to segment it into virtual VPN gateways to keep traffic from multiple VPNs separate.

The device can be managed individually by browser-based Network Voyager or in a system via Horizon Manager, two Nokia management tools.

The IP1260 becomes the eighth and largest capacity device in Nokia’s IP family of VPN/firewall appliances. The smallest is the IP 30, which supports 1.5M bit/sec firewall and an integrated four-port, 10/100 LAN switch.

The IP1260 is available now and costs $60,000 for the chassis, dual power supplies and hard drives, VPN hardware acceleration and four 10/100 Ethernet ports. Two-port 10/100 Ethernet cards cost $1,500 and two-port fiber Gigabit Ethernet cards cost $4,500.