NETGEAR announces sub-$500 Gigabit firewall 26 April, 2010 By Mark Cox

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"We think it's big news because it's the first firewall at the $500 price point to have a LAN to WAN throughput of 1Gbps," said Jason Leung, NETGEAR senior product line manager for SMB Security. "It's the first of its' kind for businesses with between 40-150 seats to do that."

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) firewall aimed at the SMB and distributed enterprise market, the SRX5308 provides ultra-high-performance, multidimensional business-class security. With four Gigabit WAN ports that provide session-based load balancing, it gives customers a secure, "no compromises" network that can support sophisticated multimedia and the higher throughput applications they need to grow their businesses.

This firewall also affords remote users the ability to build VPN tunnels to the corporate office to access centralized data using the IP Security (IPsec) standard or software clientless Secure Socket Layers (SSL). It supports up to 125 IPsec VPN tunnels and 50 SSL VPN tunnels simultaneously, for enhanced protection from network security threats. IPsec VPN tunnels deliver secure site-to-site tunnels connecting multiple offices together, as well as legacy, client-based remote access. SSL VPN tunnels enable clientless, individual remote access to corporate data, anytime and anywhere -- without needing to install a software client. In addition, the SSL VPNs support industry-strength encryption algorithms and features such as automatic cache cleanup after session termination to ensure protection and privacy of sensitive data.

"It can also be paired with our ProSecure STM Content Security appliance for a complete security solution," Leung said. "This firewall is a Layer 3 complement to our STM solution that has won many awards, and can keep up with that kind of throughput."

"NetGear hasn't been thought of as a strong security player, but we have been winning awards," Leung said. "We can bring the solution to the customer at the right price."

Price is a key component of NETGEAR's positioning against Cisco, Juniper and Check Point, with . the SRX5308's estimated U.S. street price starting at $499.

"We have the price advantage over all these guys," Leung said.

Leung also says their flat fee gives them an advantage in the SMB space.

"We don't sell it on a per license basis, unlike our competitors. Per seat licenses are attractive for enterprises, but harder for SMBs to think in terms of seats. Doing It on a flat basis lets the VAR bring down TCO very effectively."

The NETGEAR ProSafe Quad WAN Gigabit SSL VPN Firewall (SRX5308) is compatible with Windows, UNIX, Macintosh, and Linux OS and comes with full 24/7 technical support. All NETGEAR ProSafe products, including the SRX5308, are backed by a lifetime warranty and optional ProSupport Maintenance Packages.