The world’s fastest compact firewall for hyperscale data centers, 5G networks

Fortinet, a global leader in comprehensive, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, announced the FortiGate 4800F series of hyperscale firewalls, which sets new standards in security, scale, performance and innovation to meet the demands of hyperscale customers and 5G mobile network operators (MNOs).

Equipped with 16 Fortinet Seventh Generation (NP7) network processors, the FortiGate 4800F offers the highest performance of any compact firewall, with compute security ratings that deliver up to 34 times better performance than competitive solutions, including the ability to support an average of 19 times more connections per second.

“No other firewall is better suited to support hyperscaling and 5G. Not only is the FortiGate 4800F the industry’s fastest compact hyperscale firewall with 2.4 Tbps bandwidth, it’s also the only 4RU chassis on the market that includes 400GbE, 200GbE and 50GbE ports, allowing hyperscale customers and operators mobile network to seamlessly scale your business without stopping your work. The combination of performance and scalability in our latest firewall will help forward-thinking organizations invest in ultra-scale data centers, especially with the rise of 5G and unprecedented growth in data volume and speed.” — John Maddison, Executive Vice President of Product and Chief Marketing Officer, Fortinet

Large businesses and broadcasters are constantly striving to do more with less. When it comes to firewalls, higher performance in a smaller footprint means security is becoming a factor in 5G adoption, allowing mobile providers to create new use cases for enterprises and critical industries and infrastructure. It also ensures enterprise customers, such as high-speed e-commerce, advanced research institutions, financial institutions and cloud providers, have access to the performance, scalability and security they need to meet growing business needs. Reduced space, cooling and power costs are added benefits for achieving higher performance in a smaller form factor.

With these results in mind, Fortinet’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in security has led to the creation of its most powerful compact firewall: the FortiGate 4800F. With a 4RU chassis and 400GbE, 200GbE and 50GbE interfaces, this latest model in Fortinet’s flagship line of firewalls enables mobile network operators to protect 5G networks with the following features:

• Accelerating 5G adoption with a secure IP connection and support for 19x more connections per second: 5G enables massive machine-to-machine communication that requires secure IP connectivity to untrusted environments such as the Internet, edge sites, and the cloud. The FortiGate 4800F enables networked networks to provide large scale and high performance IP connectivity to external networks and domains with high performance carrier class NAT (CGNAT) and hardware logging. To build capacity to meet the needs of today and into the future, the FortiGate 4800F supports 25 million connections per second to give networks the capacity they need to handle traffic spikes and large numbers of subscriber connections. Enterprises with high-performance needs can combine multiple firewalls into a single, unified system, host on-premises applications, and deliver the user experience they need.
• Delivers 5G radio access network (RAN) traffic and core connectivity with 19x faster IPsec VPN performance: With the increased scale of 5G radios and the sharing of RAN networks between operators to reduce costs, the FortiGate 4800F provides a cost-effective security gateway (SecGW or SEG) to meet the requirements of 5G RAN scalability and security for both users and control planes.

The FortiGate 4800F also provides hyperscale security for hyperscale data centers with the following capabilities:

• Enables ultra-fast 400G data center connectivity: With 400GbE ports in a compact 4RU form factor, the FortiGate 4800F enables organizations to securely connect and replicate data using ultra-fast elephant streams, providing privacy and confidentiality to ensure all data and services are delivered close to customers and partners. Enterprises with high-performance needs can combine multiple firewalls into a single, unified system, host on-premises applications, and deliver the user experience they need. In April 2021, Fortinet became the first vendor to deliver 400GbE ports on a hyperscale firewall via the FortiGate 7121F, followed by the FortiGate 3700F in May 2022. The FortiGate 4800F continues Fortinet’s legacy as the only vendor to deliver 400GbE interfaces on a hyperscale firewall to support most intensive hyperscale use cases.
• Eliminates blind spots with SSL validation six times faster: Since 95% of today’s traffic is encrypted, SSL verification has become critical to proper network security. While encrypted paths are designed to improve traffic security, they also allow attackers to hide malicious activity. To enable inspection of all encrypted traffic while keeping up with the speed of today’s networks, the FortiGate 4800F offers the industry’s highest SSL inspection performance, as well as support for the industry’s latest TLS 1.3 standard. It also eliminates network blind spots by providing full visibility into plaintext and encrypted network flows.
• Secures hybrid IT architectures with VXLAN segmentation: Digital acceleration is only possible with hybrid IT architectures that seamlessly connect and protect on-premise and cloud assets. The FortiGate 4800F provides hardware-accelerated virtual extensible local area network (VXLAN) segmentation at massive scale and enables ultra-fast communication between extremely scalable services such as compute, storage and applications co-located on physical and virtual platforms.

The entire range of FortiGate next-generation firewalls and hyperscale firewalls supports organizations of all sizes with the following features:

• High performance security at scale: FortiGuard AI-powered security services provide innovative real-time protection against known, zero-day and unknown threats, including IPS, DNS, AV and embedded sandboxing, for edge and core data center deployments using segmentation and more of granular devices (OT/IoT) as well as Internet and application security capabilities for comprehensive perimeter protection.
• Supports zero-trust architectures with built-in universal ZTNA: FortiGate initially integrates Universal Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) to support zero trust architectures. Setting up a universal ZTNA with an on-premises or virtual FortiGate ensures that consistent policies and controls span all operating environments, including multiple clouds.

FortiGate 4800F versus the competition

Below is a comparison of the best firewalls on the market with the performance targets of the FortiGate 4800F series. The Security Compute Rating is a benchmark (performance ratio) that compares FortiGate performance to the industry average of competing products in different categories within the same price bracket.

1. A non-SSD option is also available
2. Performance with applied Hyperscale license
3. PAN: Calculated with 2xNC and 2xDPC cards
4. Juniper: SRX5400E-B2
5. Threat protection includes FortiGuard application control, AI-powered FortiGuard IPS, antivirus, logging and Sandbox security services

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