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For too long, SMBs have had to put up with expensive and underperforming gateway security appliances; but now Cyberoam's latest NG series of platforms is about to change this perception

The new appliance family benefits from a major hardware upgrade, which delivers a performance that far outstrips the competition.

The CR35iNG that we are reviewing here claims a raw firewall throughput of 2,300Mbits/sec, nearly three times faster than the Dell SonicWALL NSA 2400, which can only muster a lowly 775Mbits/sec. Additionally, the CR35iNG is far more affordable, with the cost of the appliance and Cyberoam's three-year Total Value Subscription to all security services at £1,415, excluding VAT. An NSA 2400 appliance with a similar subscription costs around twice as much.

The CR35iNG stands out for many other reasons. Along with an embedded 1.4GHz AMD G-Series T48L CPU, it has 1GB of fast DDR3 memory, a 2GB CompactFlash card for the CyberoamOS and an internal 250GB SATA hard disk. The latter is an unusual feature for a desktop appliance and allows the CR35iNG to provide local quarantining.

Reporting also gets a big boost, as Cyberoam has moved its iView Syslog server onboard the appliance where it uses the disk to store its reports. Security features are extensive and include an SPI firewall, anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware, IPS, IM and web content filtering, application controls, IPsec/SSL VPNs and traffic management. The identity-based security is also unique, as it allows administrators to link policies to users and groups, rather than just to systems. Three user types are supported and include those authenticated by an external directory server or those running Cyberoam's Corporate Client utility.

Firewall rules use port zones to define sources and destinations, and can specify networks and hosts, if required, and apply service filters, blocking actions and time schedules. Advanced rules allow you to apply anti-virus and anti-spam policies, add rules for IPS, limit Internet access and apply bandwidth restrictions.

User and group controls are extensive, as you can apply web filtering, application controls, Internet access and bandwidth usage policies to each one. Data transfer limitations on uploads and downloads can be applied, and each can have different values for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly limits. For anti-spam, you can create global rule sets for all users and custom policies for specific users and groups. Plenty of actions for suspect messages are provided and, for SMTP, you can now quarantine them. A new spam digest service is also provided, so that users with quarantined messages can have reports emailed to them regularly.

For performance testing, we used the lab's Ixia XM2 chassis and Xcellon-Ultra NP load modules. For 1518-byte UDP packets, we confirmed Cyberoam's claims with the IxLoad tool reporting a raw firewall throughput of between 2,200Mbits/sec and 2,400Mbits/sec.

For real-world testing, we reconfigured the test streams to simulate web clients requesting 1024KB pages from web servers over HTTP port 80. IxLoad reported a high top throughput of 800Mbits/sec and, with AV scanning for HTTP enabled in the firewall rule, we saw around 520Mbits/sec - very close to Cyberoam's own published figures.

Along with top performance, Cyberoam provides one of the most comprehensive ranges of security measures at this price point, making the CR35iNG ideally suited to budget-conscious SMBs. Value is improved even further by the inclusion of the internal hard disk and the extensive onboard reporting provided by the iView Syslog module.

Cyberoam's latest NG Series of security appliances set themselves apart from the competition, as they deliver the best price/performance ratio. Our lab tests confirm the quoted throughput speeds for the CR35iNG, making it one of the fastest security appliances in its class.

Product: Cyberoam CR35iNG
Supplier: VCW Security Ltd
Tel: 01691 663000
Web site: www.vcwsecurity.com
Price: Appliance with 3-year TVS subscription - £1,415, excluding VAT