SonicWall is introducing a multifunction security gateway it says delivers 50Mbps throughput when all its security applications are switched on.

NSA 2400 is the latest in a family of SonicWall unified threat management (UTM) platforms announced in February and distinguished by new multicore hardware as well as Reassembly Free Deep Packet Inspection technology that inspects traffic to Layer 7 without proxying, which affords greater throughput.

With the addition, the NSA line has four models that range in throughput from 50Mbps with the NSA 2400 to 350Mbps with the NSA 5000. That's with all their UTM features turned on. The price range is from US$2,500 for the NSA 2400 to US$8,000 for the NSA 5000, the company says.

The new model is designed to compete against UTM gear from Check Point, Cisco, Fortinet, Juniper and Watchguard, SonicWall says.

The NSA appliances replace the PRO 3060, 4060 and 4100, and end-of-life details about them will be issued in the next calendar quarter.

Security functions supported on the NSA devices are firewall, VPN, antivirus, antispyware, intrusion prevention and application firewalling.

Jeff Stott, vice president of IT at State of Franklin Savings Bank, says he upgraded from a SonicWall PRO 2040 to two NSA 2400s for a boost in throughput. He has the two devices arranged so if one fails the other takes over, and all the UTM features are turned on.

Stott says switching over from the PRO 2040 was made simpler because the configuration set for the device was transferrable to the NSA 2400, reducing the cutover time from weeks to days. "Reconfiguring a firewall and proving it secure is not something anybody finds enjoyable," he says.

SonicWall has a separate line of UTM devices called the E Series that are made for higher throughput than the NSAs, topping out at 1Gbps with all UTM features active.