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SonicWALL Pro 4060
SonicPoint AP
TZ170 AP
SonicWALL PCMCIA Card
Vigilant readers will have realised that SonicWALL submitted exactly the same piece of kit for the intrusion detection and prevention review in last month's edition of Technology & Business magazine (August 2004), the Pro 4060. This time, the folks at SonicWALL also supplied us with two SonicPoint access points, which connect to any of the Pro-series appliances to provide a centrally managed distributed wireless access and security system. This has the added benefits of being able to operate as a firewall and IPS. SonicWALL also supplied a TZ170 wireless access point for smaller businesses.
Installation and configuration for the SonicPoints is through the SonicOS interface, which is accessed via a browser on the internal port of the appliance.
The SonicPoints are specifically designed to connect to one of the network ports on any of the Pro series of appliances. The administrator creates the configuration settings for the devices, then the firewall/IPS appliance searches the network for SonicPoints, registers them, and updates their configuration accoording to its records.
SonicWALL can offer "wireless guest services", which enables a company to provide a short-term username and password to visitors or anyone who is not regularly expected to need access to information or services on the network.
Administration of the system is definitely more overwhelming than just a simple wireless gateway system, because the appliance can incorporate firewall and IDS/IPS functionality as well. Compared to running separate firewalls, intrustion detection and prevention systems, and wireless security systems, it is not really that complex at all... provided you need all that functionality.
Overall the SonicPoint solution would have to be the most integrated security solution we have seen in the lab to date, incorporating wireless security, firewall, and intrusion detection/prevention in the one appliance. If this is the way of the future, the security administrator's job is definitely going to get a lot better. Who knows, there may even be time to write policies and deploy them rather than spend all day maintaining the disparate security components to ensure that they are all working well.
| Product | SonicWALL Distributed Wireless |
| Price | Gateway from US$1434, access point US$744, NIC from US$114 |
| Vendor | SonicWALL |
| Phone | 03 9699 1978 |
| Web | www.sonicwall.com |
| Interoperability |  |
| Supports 802.11a,b, and g. Access points rely heavily on proprietary technology. | |
| Futureproofing |  ½ |
| Very secure, very scalable, supports speeds of up to 108Mbps. | |
| ROI |  |
| Very good pricing for an integrated one-stop wireless network security system. | |
| Service |  ½ |
| One-year warranty appears standard for gateway devices. | |
| Rating |  |
