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Array’s SPX5000 is a fully-featured appliance, with a superb set of VPN features. But it took some time to establish that, as the setup process was challenging. It started with a CLI network setup, complete with out-of-date documentation.

We were interested to see how the AEP Netilla Security Platform would shape up, following this year's merger of AEP and Netilla.

Websense's Web Filtering application is part of its Websense Enterprise suite of tools. It requires a copy of Windows 2000/2003 Server and a compliant web server. We used it with Microsoft's IIS, but you can also use Apache.

The 2100 CF is a dedicated content filtering appliance. It has three Fast Ethernet ports – two sit transparently inline with your internet, the third is a dedicated management port.

Fortinet's FortiGate-800 is the company's mid-range firewall. It uses FortiOS 3.0 (this is a correction from the incorrect v2.5 printed in the original article) and comes with antivirus and intrusion prevention as standard, both regularly updated.

St. Bernard's iPrism 1200 is a 1U rack-mountable appliance. With clearly labelled network ports, it is very simple to connect to the network. St. Bernard also sells the iPrism 3000, which is aimed at larger organizations, with Gigabit Ethernet.

The smallest appliance on test, Blue Coat's ProxySG 200 is half the width of standard rack mount equipment and uses a notebook-style power supply. Rather than a pure web filtering appliance, the ProxySG 200 is a full-fledged web proxy, with URL filtering built in. This makes it quick to process requests and gives you a single point of management for your proxy and web filtering.

Finjan Software's NG-5100 can be deployed as a single box, but the system supports a distributed environment where one appliance serves as a policy server, while others can scan through load balancing. It can sit as either a standard web proxy, in which case you have to reconfigure all client computers, or as a transparent web proxy.

Clearswift's MIMEsweeper for Web applies the company's email filtering system to the internet. It will install on a single Windows 2000/2003 server and works as a web proxy, scanning all requests.