Most of us know Nokia for its leadership in the mobile phone market, but a very few of us know that it has also successfully demonstrated its knowledge in the internet security appliance market, and has fulfilled the individual and enterprise requirements of the customers.

Nokia Firewall/VPN appliances, commonly known as IP Security Platforms, are not new in the market. Nokia appliances are advanced, can be easily managed, and offer enterprise-grade firewall and VPN network security.

Nokia security appliances use a secure operating system. In addition, technologies like Check Point VPN-1 UTM and Check Point VPN-1 Power are combined with the operating system to make it fulfil the requirements of medium and large enterprise data centres, service providers, carriers and large ecommerce websites.

According to a research from IDC, Nokia holds 3rd position in the market-share of Firewall/VPN appliances, after Cisco and Juniper/NetScreen. Nokia has mid-size to large enterprise customers, who need site-to-site and remote access connectivity through enterprise-deployed mobile devices. The simplest devices are cheaper than those of the large enterprise and service-provider class devices. The price range can be from $1000 to $600,000.

As we talk about different firewall/VPN devices from Nokia and their extended prices according to mid-size and large enterprise products, it will be interesting to know about the main features of some of the devices Nokia is offering in the current market.

The Nokia IP60 is known to be the simplest of firewall devices from Nokia. This is an integrated product and it provides prevention, intrusion, firewall, VPN and antivirus technologies. The device is designed for wide range of small and medium-sized applications. It can be used by home workers, branch and remote offices, and businesses. The main features of this device include; wired or wireless connectivity, centralised management, Nokia first call support, pre-licensed for easy out-of-the-box deployment, enterprise-class firewall/VPN, web filtering and Anti Virus.

For mid to large sized companies, who require robust performance and leading technology solutions, Nokia has developed IP1220, which is a purpose built IP Security Platform. This device contains latest version of Nokia IPSO secure operating system in addition to the Check Point Firewall/VPN Secure XL 2.x and the Nokia Secure Access System software. The main features of this firewall/VPN device include; Nokia Encryption Accelerator IV and up to 2GB RAM, 4 x Integrated 10/100 Ethernet ports, 2 x 6U CPCI slots for 4 PMC NICs, optional 2-Port 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, 2-Port 1000BaseF Multi-mode fibre (MMF) and 2-Port 1000 BaseT (10/100/1000 Mbps).

For large organizations and internal network segments, Nokia designed IP1280, which is famous for superior performance, coupled with high availability and flexibility. The main features of this device include; IP clustering, IPSO operating system, Check Point VPN-1 Power, VRRP, 24 Gigabit Ethernet Interfaces, HDD based storage, 4 GB RAM expandable, quad-core CPU, multi-thread technology etc.

Perhaps, one of the most sophisticated security appliances for enterprise network is IP2255, which is high-performance, high-reliability firewall with advanced Check Point VPN-1 power, firewall forwarding (8.9 Gbps), 1GB flash memory, VPN forwarding, 1000 BASE-SX (1000 Mbps Ethernet), auxiliary DB-9 port for modem access, DB-9 console for CLI access and FW connections etc.