NetScreen Unveils New Security Appliance Line

NetScreen Technologies Inc. on Monday rolled out a new line of four security appliances based on its upgraded ScreenOS software.

The biggest addition to the ScreenOS is support for network segmentation, a concept that enables administrators to set different security levels for different zones in their networks. Users can also set separate protection levels for each physical interface on the new appliances.

The new flexibility in the OS is meant to help IT managers combat the evolving security threats on the Internet.

“As new threats and network designs make traditional security models increasingly inadequate, security enforcement needs to be extended deeper into a networks infrastructure,” said David Flynn, vice president at NetScreen, of Sunnyvale, Calif.

The smaller two of the new line, the NetScreen-25 and –50 boxes, are aimed at small and medium-size businesses and include many of the features of their larger cousins. The NetScreen-25 supports up to 25 simultaneous IPSec tunnels and delivers 100M-bps throughput for the firewall and 20M bps for the VPN. The –50 model has 170M- and 50M-bps performance for the firewall and VPN, respectively, and supports 100 IPSec tunnels.

The 200 series appliances are more powerful than their smaller counterparts and are meant for use in medium- to large-size enterprises. The larger of the two, the 208, has eight 10/100 Ethernet ports and 550M bps of firewall throughput and 200M bps of VPN throughput. The NetScreen-204, meanwhile, comes with four 10/100 Ethernet ports and firewall and VPN performance of 400M and 200M bps.

Both of the 200 series machines can support 1,000 IPSec tunnels and 128,000 concurrent sessions.

All of the new appliances are available now.