First to deliver 1 Terabit per second Firewall Throughput

6th August 2014

Fortinet www.fortinet.com, a global leader in high-performance network security, redefined the standard for firewall performance by being the first network security vendor to deliver a firewall – the new FortiGate 5144C – that exceeds 1 terabit per second throughput performance and offers 10GbE, 40GbE and 100GbE connectivity options. This firmly positions the FortiGate 5144C as the world’s fastest firewall, making it the ideal security solution for carriers, service providers and large-scale enterprises who have the most demanding performance and scalability requirements for network security, and who want unparalleled versatility and flexibility in delivering high performance data, application and network protection to their customers and users.

“Major market drivers, such as big data, cloud-based services and the explosion of Software as a Service translates to data centres needing exceptionally fast and secure security platforms to protect their applications and data,” said Ken Xie, founder and CEO of Fortinet. “Others have claimed to have the fastest firewall, but no other vendor has actually delivered this level of performance and security, which enables customers to build out their data centres for the future, knowing that their firewalls will not be a choke point.”

FortiGate 5000 Series – Setting the Standard for High Performance Security via NP6 ASICs
The new FortiGate 5000 Series is Fortinet’s flagship, chassis and blade firewall platform.  Built for large-scale enterprise data centre and carrier-class environments, the FortiGate 5000 series includes fully redundant, hot-swappable power supplies, fans and firewall blades for maximum uptime.

The new 5000 Series is comprised of a new chassis – the FortiGate 5144C, new controller networking blades (5903C/5913C) and new security blades (5001D) that utilize the latest NP6 network processor to deliver 40 Gbps firewall throughput per ASIC.  Unlike common, off-the-shelf processors used by other vendors, the NP6 ASIC is a revolutionary, low-power design that produces unparalleled firewall throughput (40Gbps) as well as 2-3microsecond latency.  Coupled with native IPv4 and IPv6 traffic processing, the NP6 is ideally suited for next-generation networks. By running fourteen 5001D security blades concurrently, today’s 5000 Series delivers more than 1 Tbps firewall throughput. The new 5000 Series leverages the same high-performance hardware architecture, NP6 ASICs and FortiOS that power the award-winning enterprise FortiGate 1000 and 3000 security appliances that protect data centres and enterprise users.  This provides unparalleled deployment flexibility, security functionality and policy enforcement.

“The industry is facing a massive change as businesses and consumers demand applications and services to be delivered instantly. Just as important is the fact that security must play an active role in this new paradigm of delivering X as a service,” said Chris Rodriguez, senior industry analyst, network security at Frost & Sullivan.  “By delivering firewall performance at the one terabit per second threshold, Fortinet helps ensure new services can be added into the future and delivered without sacrificing security or performance.”

FortiGate 5001D Blades – State of the Art Security in a Blade Design
The new 5001D security blades provide the core security capabilities to the new 5000 Series. These represent the 5th generation process boards that can process 100 Gbps throughput.  Each 5001D blade embeds two FortiASIC NP6 processors.  This provides full next-generation firewall capabilities, including: deep packet inspection, IPS, application control, web content filtering and more.  In addition, because of Fortinet’s unique VDOM technology, multiple virtual instances can run concomitantly, giving MSSPs and carriers the ability to offer thousands of dedicated NGFW capabilities to their customers.

“Operating one of the largest end-to-end communications network in the United States requires high performance and strong security,” said Mike Perusse, CTO of MegaPath, a nationwide provider of voice, data, security and cloud services.  “Fortinet is an undeniable leader of high performance network security, and their new 5000 Series stands to be a breakthrough in helping to secure the delivery of next-generation services, today.”

New FortiController to Provide 100 Gigabit Ethernet Connectivity
For datacentres or telecom environments that require 100 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, Fortinet presents the new FortiController-5913C controller blade.  The FortiController-5913C is an Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture compliant session-aware load balancing hub/switch that distributes traffic to a maximum of 14 FortiGate-5001D blades within the new 5000-series chassis fabric backplane.  This provides unparalleled performance and eliminates any potential bottlenecks as datacentres re-architect their network topology to 100 GbE.  The FortiController-5913C will be available in Q4.  For environments that only need 40 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, customers can use the FortiController-5903C Controller, which is available now.