says Ibase.

(Click here for a larger view of Ibase's FWA7108)

The FWA7108 is designed for small to medium businesses and enterprises needing cost-effective, power efficient appliances for secure networking applications, says Ibase. Specific applications are said to include firewall, virtual private network (VPN), and unified threat management (UTM), says the company.

Like many other recent network security appliances, including Win Enterprises's PL-10540 and PL-10550 and Lanner Electronics's FW-7570, the FWA7108 incorporates the Intel Pentium M EP80579 ("Tolapai") system-on-chip (SoC). The EP80579 integrates typical northbridge and southbridge functions with a Pentium M core clocked up to 1.2GHz.

The SoC (see block digram, below) also integrates a memory controller hub (MCH) supporting DDR2 RAM up to 800MHz, an SPI interface to boot flash, up to eight lanes of PCI Express expansion, dual SATA and USB 2.0 interfaces, UARTS, GPIO, and SMBus. There's also an "I/O complex" boasting three Ethernet MACs, two Controller Area Network (CAN) interfaces, and a local expansion bus interface.


Intel EP80579 block diagram
(Click to enlarge)
Ibase did not reveal the clock speed used by its EP80579 implementation, nor did it mention the memory complement available with the RWA7108. It does report, however, that the RWA7108 incorporates the SoC's optional ultra-highspeed FPGA co-processor interface dubbed "QuickAssist." With QuickAssist, the RWA7108 can accelerate cryptographic and packet processing, says the company. The appliance also makes use of the SoC's HIFN 7964/7965/7966 algorithm accelerator, which is said to further boost cryptographic computing power and performance under full security operation.

The FWA7108 provides eight gigabit Ethernet ports with two pairs of LAN bypass for recovering from power, hardware, or software failures. Other I/O is said to include a USB 2.0 port, Mini-PCI slot, and RJ45 console. Storage features include a CompactFlash Type II socket, and either a 2.5- or 3.5-inch SATA hard disk drive (HDD). Additional RWA7108 features are said to include programmable LEDs, and an optional LCD panel for monitoring of power, storage, and network activities.

Availability

Ibase did not offer pricing or availability information on the FWA7108. Operating system compatibility wasn't detailed, either, but past network appliances from Ibase have provided Windows XP and Windows XP Embedded support.

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