When I talk with companies like Fortinet, Check Point and Palo Alto Networks, all I hear is the increasing need to improve security functionality while simultaneously decreasing the data center footprint. It’s a great story for vendors who are pushing next-generation firewalls and unified threat management devices.

Netgear is doing something entirely different: a low-cost, high-speed firewall/VPN appliance that comes in less than $500.

The ProSafe Quad-WAN SSL VPN Firewall SRX5308 does two things: gigabit-speed throughput on a stateful inspection firewall and support for 125 IPsec VPN tunnels and 50 SSL VPN tunnels. Netgear says the device is perfect for SMBs and enterprise branch office deployments.

Netgear says the ProSafe SRX5308 complements its ProSecure STM Content Security appliances, which provides network-level security and application-level malware screening, antispam, and URL/content filtering.

Netgear is certainly bucking the trend when it comes to consolidation and ease of management. While its synergistic appliances are managed through one console, the idea of having multiple boxes that perform different tasks - especially in SMB environments - is almost counterintuitive at this point. Netgear does have its own UTM appliances, but those are slower and designed for different engagements, the company says.

Netgear believes the ProSafe SRX5308 is a suitable replacement for aging point firewalls in environments that are price-sensitive. Further, it’s positioning the device as a means for security LAN-to-WAN connections, meaning it believes it can crack the enterprise security market with the device. Netgear already has several partners selling the device and has high hopes for both capturing new customers and upselling existing Netgear users.

The question that remains is whether a conventional - albeit fast - firewall/VPN appliance is worthy in the age of consolidated security appliances?