Fortinet/FortiGate - experience and observations?

Fortinet and its FortiGate product line seem to have appeared out of
nowhere since the last time I looked at the firewall market. Does
anyone have any experience with their products (esp at the high end of
the SMB line - say the 300a)? The trade press reviews seem to indicate
that the FortiGates have reasonably high performance, provide good
price/performance ratio, but are difficult to set up. Does that match
your experience?

Specific features I am looking at are QoS and two-ISP load sharing.

Thanks.

sPh

Re: Fortinet/FortiGate - experience and observations?

You may wish to investigate the Miercom Competitve Lab Tests between
the:

Fortinet FortiGate 1000

vs.

Cisco ASA 5520

Juniper Networks NetScreen-208

Checkpoint VPN-1 Pro

http://www.bradreese.com/juniper-firewall-vs-cisco.pdf

Sincerely,

Brad Reese
BradReese.Com - Cisco vs. Competitor Lab Tests
http://www.bradreese.com/cisco-vs-competitor.htm
1293 Hendersonville Road, Suite 17
Asheville, North Carolina USA 28803
USA & Canada: 877-549-2680
International: 828-277-7272
Fax: 775-254-3558
AIM: R2MGrant
BradReese.Com - Cisco Power Supply Headquarters
http://www.bradreese.com/cisco-power-supply-inventory.htm

Re: Fortinet/FortiGate - experience and observations?

Hello sphealey,

> Fortinet and its FortiGate product line seem to have appeared out of
> nowhere since the last time I looked at the firewall market. Does
> anyone have any experience with their products (esp at the high end of
> the SMB line - say the 300a)? The trade press reviews seem to
> indicate that the FortiGates have reasonably high performance, provide
> good price/performance ratio, but are difficult to set up. Does that
> match your experience?

We use this at work. I even spent a day with Fortinet Europe yesterday... :)

I like the product. You can do much with it.

> Specific features I am looking at are QoS and two-ISP load sharing.

QoS; supported. But I haven't tried it much. What do you need?

Load-sharing: supported. I have customers running this today. You should
have almost equal speed lines. The load is divided by connection, so you
will get unequal load anyway.
---
Helge Olav Helgesen
http://www.helge.net

Re: Fortinet/FortiGate - experience and observations?

www.BradReese.Com wrote:

: http://www.bradreese.com/juniper-firewall-vs-cisco.pdf

Isn't it funny when a vendor is ordering a test that their product is
always winning by far and zero fields of improvement?

Other similar readings may include:
http://www.dric.com.mx/docs/fortinet_cisco.pdf
http://www.checkpoint.com/presskit/ngx/downloads/NGX_TollyWP .pdf
http://www.checkpoint.com/products/downloads/tollyreport.pdf
http://www.netscreen.pl/PDF/Tolly_NS5200.pdf
http://www.cisco.com/asiapac/campaigns/everycorner/files/ASA _5500_Miercom_Sales_Kit.pdf
http://www.spirentcom.com/documents/atp/The_Tolly_Group-Indu stry_Test-1493.pdf

and:
http://www.securecomputing.com/pdf/GartnerMagicQuadrantFirew alls1H06.pdf
http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/Guysecurity.pdf

Good luck!

Lars

Re: Fortinet/FortiGate - experience and observations?

Hello www.BradReese.Com,

> http://www.bradreese.com/juniper-firewall-vs-cisco.pdf
> http://www.bradreese.com/cisco-vs-competitor.htm

I'm very scpetic where reviews give 100% to the one vendor paying for the
test.

I got a Fortigate-500 unit at work and I have better performance than you
got from the bigger FG-1000 unit. I don't use the antispam and the webfiltering
function. But you didn't test with these functions enabled.
---
Helge Olav Helgesen
http://www.helge.net

Re: Fortinet/FortiGate - experience and observations?

Hi,

I had a good experienced on Fortigate 200 I worked around 1 year on
that UTm Device and now upgraded to Fortigate 300A with failover.

>The trade press reviews seem to indicate
> that the FortiGates have reasonably high performance, provide good
> price/performance ratio,

Its not true Fortigate works like same as all other but it architecture
is chip based sop processing is fast and i used a smal box like 200 in
100 users enviornemnt with fully loaded Antivirus,AntiSpam,WebF, user
based Bandwdth shaping etc. Pricing is just a bit low then other
devices like Sonicwall, Watchguard etc.

>but are difficult to set up.
Its little bit diffrent then other devices GUI based but its better to
take Admin guide before setting up BOX.

> Specific features I am looking at are QoS and two-ISP load sharing.
For QOS you have to cnfigure it it does IP and user based QOS . For
Load balancing make sure you take minimum 4 port BOX.


CK





sphealey wrote:
> Fortinet and its FortiGate product line seem to have appeared out of
> nowhere since the last time I looked at the firewall market. Does
> anyone have any experience with their products (esp at the high end of
> the SMB line - say the 300a)? The trade press reviews seem to indicate
> that the FortiGates have reasonably high performance, provide good
> price/performance ratio, but are difficult to set up. Does that match
> your experience?
>
> Specific features I am looking at are QoS and two-ISP load sharing.
>
> Thanks.
>
> sPh