Hands on: I tried out the Allied Telesis AT-AR4050S-5G – read how this gateway appliance holds up against the competition
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This comment first appeared in Issue 352 PC Pro.
AT-AR4050S-5G from Telesis targets from Allied forces Small and medium-sized enterprises Remote offices seek a solution that combines tough network peripheral security with full WAN redundancy. This desktop Firewall Appliance Sports Dual 5G Sim slot and provides WAN failover services for enterprises that cannot tolerate any Internet downtime.
You can add two 5G SIMS, which are automatically configured as primary and backup mobile network connections, and the device supports cards from different carriers. You can also use one of the device’s wired WAN ports as the primary Internet link and use a 5G connection for backup.
Equipment works with eight gigabit dual gigabit port team Network switch Used for LAN systems. It has enough power, and its quad-core 1.5GHz CPU claims maximum raw firewall throughput of 1.9Gbits/sec, enables Intrusion Prevention Services (IPS), which drops to 750mbits/sec.
The basic license for this device gives the SPI firewall a deep packet inspection, including IPS, Network filteringbuilt-in application controls, bandwidth management and support for IPSEC and SSL VPN. Includes free central management of five Allied TELESis TQ series wireless access points, with feature licenses extending it to 25.
There are two optional security licenses available, but you can only choose one because they cannot run together. Advanced firewall options activate a wider range of applications and network controls, while advanced threat protection versions add more rugged IP and IP reputation services at a cost of £521 per year.
Our system comes with Vodafone 5G SIM, which we use as Backup Connection to the first Gigabit WAN port that provides the primary connection. Deployment is simple: The browser interface of the device provides a quick boot wizard that selects the primary WAN connection and assigns the DHCP server to the default LAN subnet.
In a Dual 5G SIM deployment, you set the Failover Interval to the Master SIM and if it fails, the device will automatically swap it to the backup SIM bit. To test wired WAN redundancy, we removed the network cable, but found that the backup SIM card only intervened after rebooting the device, although we did point out that after reconnecting the network cable, it restored it back here without any intervention.
The widget-based dashboard of the web console displays graphics for the device as well as tables and graphics for traffic activity, hardware utilization of the device Safety Service activity and top applications. The minor complaint is that the graph only shows active LAN ports and does not highlight which Ethernet WAN ports and SIM card slots are active.
The device uses entities to define a logical map of the network, i.e. it can be a region, network, and client. Top-level regions describe boundaries such as WAN, LAN, and DMZ, while when the client is a single system, each region contains an IP subnet and an address network.
When you create firewall rules, they come into play because they include a source and destination entity, as well as actions that block or allow traffic between them. You can also add rules to manage bandwidth usage for a specific application and assign them to entities.
Advanced Threat Protection Licenses can make IP reputation lists and IPS stronger, provided by ProofPoint’s ET-Pro rule set. Web console has options Anti-malware and Antivirus softwarebut we were told that these Kaspersky-managed services are no longer available.
The built-in application library contains about 200 signatures, while the Advanced Firewall license activates Procera app Visibility library, increasing the signature count to nearly 2,000. Similarly, with URL filtering, the OpenText list can be upgraded to digital art services that offer about 100 web categories.
The AT-AR4050S-5G neatly integrates advanced network security and integrates with redundant 5G mobile connections. Failover of wired WAN connections is not perfect, and some security features are no longer available, but the device will attract businesses and remote offices in rural areas with limited broadband services and are available at very competitive prices.
