Underneath its bulky, decidedly retro chassis, Fortinets $895 FortiWiFi-60 packs excellent security gateway features for small businesses and remote offices.
The FortiWiFi-60s wireless components seem like an afterthought, although the device does provide some very welcome network-based anti-virus scans on WLAN traffic to the rest of the network.
The FortiWiFi-60 features dual WAN ports for redundant Internet connections, a DMZ port, USB ports that accommodate external modems, a four-port 10/100M-bps LAN switch and an 802.11b/g WLAN access point.
The FortiWiFi-60 offers a configurable stateful inspection firewall, plus virus scans, intrusion prevention, and simple Web and e-mail content filtering. In my tests, the FortiWiFi-60 capably blocked viruses transmitted via FTP and e-mail from the WLAN to a LAN and a WAN. However, the device cant detect viruses traveling between wireless clients; content scans are performed only as traffic travels from one network zone to another.
When used as an access point, the FortiWiFi-60 is a disappointment: Wireless configuration options are few and far between. The device supports 128-bit WEP encryption but not WPA, and I could not turn off the network name broadcast, making the WLAN easy to find and possibly crack unless wireless clients use a VPN.
The FortiWiFi-60 started shipping at the end of last month. For more information, check out www.fortinet.com.
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