SonicWALL announces all-in-one secure wireless gateway

Internet security appliance maker SonicWALL yesterday SOHO TZW Secure Wireless Gateway . Targeted at SME customers, the TZW combines secure wireless, firewall and IPsec VPN technologies in a single turnkey product.The TZW includes what SonicWALL terms a "Trusted Zone for Wireless" which requires the use of IPsec authentication and encryption for all 802.11b clients. The TZW comes bundled with 25 licenses for SonicWALL's Global IPsec VPN client that can be used with wired or wireless clients.The TZW is available now at a street price as low as $685 .

The TZW also supports unauthenticated and encrypted wireless traffic via its "Wireless Guest Services" feature, which can run concurrently with "trusted" wireless zones. This means that it can serve both as an 802.11b "hotspot", and a secure wireless portal at the same time. A built-in authentication server supports up to 100 users, or the TZW can pass authentication requests to a RADIUS server.SonicWALL says the product initially supports only the 11Mbps 802.11b standard, but that other models are in the works that will support the faster 802.11a and 11g WLAN standards. However, citing hardware cost optimization design issues, SonicWALL said that the first TZW will not be field upgradeable (via radio replacement) to the faster standards when they become available.