FloodGate-1

The Challenge

Organisations worldwide are increasingly using IP-based technologies to support critical applications on both Internet and Private WAN links. VPN technologies, in particular, are making it possible to gain competitive advantage by connecting employees, partners, and customers using the Internet. Although the benefits of Internet technologies are undeniable, the resulting flood of traffic can cause severe congestion on limited WAN/Internet links. Too often, bandwidth hungry discretionary traffic overwhelms business critical traffic on these links.

The Solution

Check Point FloodGate-1, a policy based, quality of service (QoS) solution for private WAN and Internet links, solves the network congestion problem. A policy consists of traffic rules, which assign bandwidth privileges to specific classes of packets. FloodGate-1optimises network performance by assigning priority to business critical traffic based on relative merit. For example, ERP, database, or e-commerce applications running on a corporate VPN, can be prioritised over less important Internet traffic, so network resources are aligned with business goals.

Product Features

• Flexible QoS control with weighted priorities, guarantees, and limits
• Integration with Check Point's VPN-1 and FireWall-1products
• Enterprise policy management server
• Graphical real time traffic monitor
  

Product Benefits

• Reliable performance for business critical traffic such as VPN, ERP, and e-commerce
• Eliminate the need to deploy separate products for VPN, firewall, and bandwidth management
• Centrally modify policies without the need to reconfigure each enforcement point
• Easily identify sources of network congestion

The next step

For a FloodGate-1 brochure, or to find out more about other Check Point solutions and OPSEC (Open Platform for Security), please email your full contact details to response@avdcs.co.uk specifying your interest

Integration with Check Point VPN-1 and FireWall-1

Although FloodGate-1 can be implemented standalone, there are clear benefits when it is deployed with Check Point FireWall-1 or as an integrated component of Check Point's VPN-1 product family. The combination of FloodGate-1 and VPN-1, for example, ensures optimal performance for mission critical VPN traffic by prioritizing packets prior to encryption. QoS is a requirement in many VPN deployments, where performance is important and there is the possibility of congestion on the Internet link.

The integrated solution layers firewall, VPN and QoS functionality on top of Check Point's underlying three-tier architecture. As a result, Check Point customers can easily extend a Firewall-1 or VPN-1 deployment to include QoS, without the complexities associated with managing multiple discrete function devices.

Integrated Policy Editor

Check Point combines QoS, security, VPN, and Network Address Translation (NAT), policy editors into a single integrated application. Each policy leverages shared network objects and each leverages the same management metaphors. As a result, it is a simple task to extend a firewall policy to include VPN and QoS policies. There is no need to support multiple management interfaces for multiple discrete function devices distributed across the enterprise.

Graphical Real Time Traffic Monitoring

FloodGate-1's graphical real time traffic monitor allows the network administrator to create real time plots of performance metrics like packets per second, bytes per second, and line utilization for each class of traffic. The monitor provides the administrator with immediate feedback on the impact of a FloodGate-1 policy.

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