We're looking to upgrade our current network/firewall setup at our main office. We currently use a Cisco pix 506 on a T1 wan connection. We also have a DSL line as a backup that we manually failover. Our main office has 40-50 users and we have a remote office with 10 users also using a PIX 506 and have a site-to-site VPN between the two offices.
What we want to do is upgrade the firewall on the home office, to something that will allow for automatic failover of our T1 and DSL lines (i.e. dual WAN support). The site-to-site VPN to our remote office would also need to automatically failover. Load balancing would be a plus but not sure what products include this other than Netscreen (does the Fortigate support this?). We would also like to setup a DMZ for our servers, and almost all products we're looking at allow this so I don't see this being a big issue. VPN performance is important too. We do not need remote client VPN functionality as we use Citrix for remote access.
I've had experience running Checkpoint/Nokia in the past but that still seems to be on the more expensive side as there are a lot of newer appliances that are more cost effective. I'm looking at the Fortigate
60 and 100A, as well as the Netscreen 5GT with the extended license. Cisco and Checkpoint seem way overpriced. How has the Juniper Networks acquisition of Netscreen played out now that it has been 2 years since? Juniper also has released its own products, the SSG 5 that seem to be pretty much the same as the NetScreen 5GT? Anyone have any experience with the SSG line?I'd appreciate any feedback, suggestions, recommendations from people who've had experiences with these and other products.
Thanks!
Chris