PowerWallz tumbles into the firewall/VPN arena

There’s a two-year-old company out of Vancouver, B.C., called PowerWallz that is just getting into the firewall/VPN appliance game.

It’s pretty late to be jumping in if you want to be the leader in the field, but it’s not too late if you are just trying to sell some boxes for a modest profit.

The company this month is shipping V1000, its first appliance which it says can handle 20M bit/sec of Triple-DES encryption – plenty of speed for the size office the device is meant for. PowerWallz envisions the box will be used in offices fed by DSL lines or perhaps a T-1, so it has plenty of horsepower to support the expected load.

The company says that its attractiveness to customers will be its simplified configuration. Its security policies are preset to a level that is adequate for most offices. All that is required for those users is to enter the IP address of other devices it can make connections with, the IP address ranges of the devices it is allowed to tunnel to, and specifying the authentication. After that, the box is ready to go, the company says.

For the other 10% of users, configuration takes more time, and it can be done remotely via the Web.

The device also contains a Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol server, meaning Windows-based PCs can make secure connections to the V1000 using the PPTP software that comes standard with the operating system.

The V1000 costs $999 and is available now. PowerWallz may have to work on the price a bit; you can buy a similar SonicWall appliance, for example, for less.