Review: Nokia IP380

The Nokia-Check Point partnership has been a successful one, combining Nokia's excellent hardware implementation with Check Point's proven security technology, as we can see with the IP380. Aimed at the small enterprise or branch office, the IP380 comes with a cryptographic accelerator, capable of 130Mbps of 3DES VPN traffic and four Fast Ethernet ports. With two spare slots in the 1U chassis, you can upgrade network capability at a later date.

Nokia neatly splits management between hardware and software. After configuring an initial IP address, you can either use the excellent Voyager web interface to access and configure interface, routing and traffic information, or the Horizon Management Software. The latter option has the advantage that you can manage all your Nokia hardware from one interface. It also means that you can split management so administrators are either in charge of hardware or software.

The firewall software is Check Point's Firewall-1 NG, which comes pre-installed on the appliance. After a brief installation process, which configures licenses and administrators, the firewall is ready to run.

Check Point provides a large range of management applications depending on the size of your network. If you already have a Check Point installation, then the IP380 fits seamlessly into the structure.

Being Check Point, the IP380 uses the same excellent policy management. After building the list of objects, including networks and users, you can build the rules for each firewall.

Rules define the flow between network objects and allowed and denied traffic. And because they are applied no matter which physical port is being used, this makes it both a powerful and a flexible system. Objects can be reused across the whole network, so building the list of network objects is a once-only job.

This is a very powerful, if rather expensive, system. With hugely flexible management, and simple integration (with Check Point), the IP380 ticks all the right boxes.

For:

Excellent hardware management; Check Point provides plenty of management options.

Expensive for a single installation.

Powerful and flexible; will fit easily into any existing infrastructure.