SonicWall UTM Appliance Does Wireless Broadband
The SonicWall TZ 190 appliance includes standard unified threat management (UTM) features such as gateway antispam, antivirus and intrusion prevention, and it comes with a deep packet inspection firewall. But it's the addition of support for EV-DO wireless broadband cards that's attracting the most attention from customers, said John Gordineer, product line manager at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based security vendor.
With EV-DO, which offers download speeds of up to 2 Mbps, a company can deploy the TZ 190 at a branch office and have it serve as a secure VPN link back to the corporate network, according to Gordineer. The TZ 190 also can be deployed in farther-flung locations, such as international border checkpoints, enabling officials to perform on-the-fly passport checks against a remote database, he added.
Nick Glinkowski, North America sales director at Pacific Voice and Data, a Union City, Calif.-based solution provider, said the TZ 190's security and wireless broadband features are "basically priceless."
"Clients can go into remote locations and new territories and open up shop without DSL being readily available. That capability quickly pays for itself," Glinkowski said.
SonicWall is developing drivers to allow cards from the major EV-DO card manufacturers to work with the TZ 190, which also supports HSDPA, 1xRTT, EDGE, UMTS and GPRS networks, Gordineer said. The TZ 190 also includes an integrated wireless switch and controller that allows customers to connect a series of WLAN access points.
The TZ 190 is priced at $995 and is slated be released at the end of November.