The launch of the new E-Class boxes comes just a few months after SonicWall acquired Aventail, an SSL VPN software maker that played primarily into the enterprise.
The E-Class NSA E7500, E6500 and E5500 appliances use multiple multi-core processors, between 8 and 16 core per device, depending on the model, to gain the kind of performance needed on large enterprise networks.
When everything is turned on you can effectively get 1Gbps throughput on the appliance, said SonicWall product manager Jon Kuhn. Typically, the more features that are active, the slower the UTM box.
Everything in this case includes firewall, intrusion prevention system, IPSec VPN, and gateway antivirus. Kuhn claimed that for the same price, competing products would get about 300Mbps with the same functionality turned on.
On top of the multi-core processor hardware, SonicWall has built a reassembly-free inspection engine for scanning traffic as it passes through the box without having to reassemble entire files in memory before scanning them for threats.
The three appliances are priced in the $10,000 to $30,000 range. The E7500 is available now, the other two will be released before the end of the year.
