ZyXEL Unveils Wireless Firewalls with VPN

The appliances, the Prestige 334 and Prestige 334W, comprised the latest offerings in the vendor's Prestige home/office gateway product family. They were expected to be available to channel partners immediately.

According to Munira Brooks, ZyXEL's vice president of sales, marketing and business development, the tools were modeled after the company's ZyWALL firewall/VPN product line, and offer features such as Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI), 3DES VPN encryption, and Denial of Service (DoS) attack prevention.

"We have tailored the features for security-minded users, both consumers and enterprise-level," Brooks said. "The new Prestige gateways are idea for SOHO and remote users who demand a high-performance router with solid security and safety features."

As Brooks explained, speed is a key feature of both devices. The Prestige 334 and can run at up to 100 Mbps, facilitating network-hosted applications such as e-mail, video conferencing, and VoIP.

The Prestige 334W also features WPA, 802.11g user authentication, and WEP encryption, enabling remote users to experience secure WLAN connectivity.

When used with the Anaheim, Calif.-based company's Vantage network management software, the firewalls also allow enterprise IT managers to control telecommuters and remote users from one console.

The ZyXEL Prestige 334 is available now for $69.99 apiece. The Prestige 334W was expected to be available by the end of April for $89.99.