Content area
Full Text
Exclusive look shows performance improvement but uncovers a few rough edges.
NetScreen Technologies has released brand-new hardware products and software upgrades. Hardware that yields throughput over the gigabit mark for firewall and VPN performance, coupled with a revision of its ScreenOS security operating system, makes Net,Screen ready to challenge its competition for enterprise business. In this exclusive review we looked at two hardware platforms - the eight-port Fast Ethernet NetScreen-208 and a beta of the eight-port Gigabit Ethernet NetScreen5200 security appliances - and evaluated them when loaded with ScreenOS 3.1.
This new version of the underlying operating system lets NetScreen hardware support a larger variety of firewall and VPN configuration options, lifting a restriction inherent in all previous versions of NetScreen's products and in most other appliance-- style firewall products.
While NetScreen has come a long way with new hardware and software in terms of speed and usability it still has quite a few rough edges to smooth out on these products.
NetScreen-5200, which was released last month, is an expandable chassis with two slots. One slot is reserved for the management card and central processor. Other slots can be filled with eight-port Gigabit Ethernet cards available now or 24-port Fast Ethernet/two-port Gigabit Ethernet cards to ship later this year.
The architecture on the 5000-series chassis is radically different from that on previous systems. NetScreen's new GigaScreen-II ASICs run independently of the main CPU, checking in only when necessary to evaluate firewall and VPN rules....