The new AC-404 has two fast Ethernet and two GbE interfaces. Our entry-level product is the 402, with one internal and one external interface, said Antoine Guy, Allot’s director of product marketing, whereas the 404, with four interfaces, is designed to meet the high availability requirements of enterprises with a lot of bandwidth.
You could do the same thing with two boxes, he said, but then they would need to be talking to each other to know what the other’s doing all the time, since you could be sending data for the same app across both, which would require a lot of synchronization.
The 404 can handle two WAN or internet links. You could be handling one internet and one intranet link, or one internet and one DMZ, or in a data center scenario, you could have two external links, each connected to two internal switches for resilience of the connections, said Steve Boddy, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based vendor’s sales manager for the UK and Ireland.
List pricing for the new box varies by its intended function and the speed at which it will run. A monitoring-only version of the device costs $8,900, while one offering quality of service (QoS) optimization at 2Mbps is $9,250. A 10Mbps version is $13,700, a 45Mbps one $18,350 and, at the high end, a 100Mbps box lists at $22,200.
The AC-404 will compete with the 6500 range of devices from Packeteer Inc, which goes from a monitoring-only version (the PacketSeeker) through to a 100Mbps QoS box called the PacketShaper. In general terms, these boxes are more expensive than Allot’s, said Boddy, adding that they are also two-interface devices, with more being added by acquiring what they call a LAN Expansion Module, which increases the price even further.
The target market for the 404 is the multi-site enterprise such as a bank, where high availability, internet and WAN intranet links into a data center are required for multiple branches, said Guy. Also the company is looking at universities where redundant WAN access is needed and traffic shaping is applicable, he went on.
