The EX Series from A10 are bandwidth management boxes that are deployed at the edge of the network as either a router or a transparent bridge (each appliance supports either deployment mode). Features provided by the appliances focus on the optimization of WAN bandwidth, including traffic shaping, limiting, and QoS; with models in the series now available for SME through Enterprise deployments.

A key feature of the EX Series offerings is their support for identity-based resolution of WAN traffic: The devices can resolve the actual user identity (not just IP addresses) of the LAN user generating the traffic for logging and reporting purposes. Out of the box, the EX Series supports identity resolution for common WAN applications including E-Mail (SMTP/POP3), file transfer (FTP, NFS, and CIFS), and instant messaging (Yahoo!, AOL, MSN). The vendor's IDsentrie product (a separately available device that can be integrated with the EX Series) expands this capability to all WAN applications by enabling the resolution of traffic to actual user identities based on IP addresses.

For bandwidth management in particular, the devices are able to automatically interrogate and classify WAN traffic among better than 100 known applications for purposes of the assignment of QoS, traffic shaping (min/max rate, priority, etc.), and traffic limiting metrics. Monitoring and reporting features include the ability to report with ID information for those applications supported by the EX Series, the ability to generate customizable reports and deliver them via E-mail or export, and the ability to generate alerts based on custom thresholds. Top user and top traffic reports are also available.

Other types of WAN traffic optimization enabled by the EX series appliances include load balancing between multiple ISP links; load balancing to multiple firewalls; cache server redirection; and site-to-site traffic compression (which requires an EX series appliance on both sides of the communication).

Beyond traffic optimization, the appliance additionally features the ability to provide basic security screening of traffic (via IPS anomaly detection, including DDoS and ICMP-based attacks). Management of the devices is via a CLI (SSH/Telnet) or GUI; and HA (active/standby) deployments are also supported.

Three models of the appliance are currently offered by the vendor.

The new entry level EX 1000 is targeted to SME deployments, and includes 4 GigE (copper) port, a single fan, power supply, and hard drive. It's driven by a P4.

The 2100/2200 appliances both include redundant components (fans, power supplies, and HDs w/RAID 1) driven by dual Xeon processors (single or dual core configurations offered). The 2100 offers 8 GigE ports plus 2 SFP ports; while the 2200 offers 12 GigE ports (no SFP ports).

Base pricing for the EX 1000 is $9,995; while the EX 2100 and 2200 are base priced at $24,995. All are available now.

Visit the vendor's Web site for further information.

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