SonicWall TZ-190 Generation 5 firewall with WWAN The August 2005 issue of Popular Science documented how to turn a backpack into a mobile hotspot using the Junxion Box wireless gateway to create a solar powered backpack hotspot. However, at $700 the Junxion Box gives you basic WiFi router capabilities appropriate for the SOHO/SMB environment. The newly released TZ190 from SonicWall is a bit more expensive at $7 The August 2005 issue of Popular Science documented how to turn a backpack into a mobile hotspot using the Junxion Box wireless gateway to create a solar powered backpack hotspot. However, at $700 the Junxion Box gives you basic WiFi router capabilities appropriate for the SOHO/SMB environment. The newly released TZ190 from SonicWall is a bit more expensive at $725 (Street price from Froogle, however the MSRP is $995), and like the Junxion you’ll also have to purchase your Ev-DO card or HSDP/EDGE/UMTS card separately. I picked mine up from Mobile Planet for $299 for the Option GT GlobalMax HSDP/EDGE/UMTS card originating in the UK. So while capable of upwards of 1.8mb/sec, this card can only do this in europe, hope of some truly leading edge mobile networks. So while my Option GT GlobalMax card slowly winds its way from the UK, we’re doing some initial testing on Sprint’s EV-DO network.Some other efforts in this market space:https://www.stompboxnetworks.com/intro.html https://www.dlink.com/press/pr/?prid=241https://www.digi.com/products/cellulargateways/https://www.kyocera-wireless.com/kr1-router/ https://www.proxicast.com/index.htm Why enterprise grade instead of SOHO?What sets firewalls apart is their ability to move packets through filters, manage buffers (large attachments), deep packet inspection on the fly, IPsec VPN throughput both with and without deep packet inspection, and the ability to turn away the tidal wave of malware banging at the door. The key is to do this all at the same time, and NEVER fail by letting the crud through. I’ve been testing quite a few firewalls using the Musecurity MU-4000 and learning just how easy it is to tip most firewalls over. One of my favorite ways to test is to build a 2gb file of worms and virae I’ve been collecting and toss it through the firewall as both an FTP download and as a SMTP file attachment. VERY few firewalls in the SMB/SOHO market can survive this, whereas most of the major players in the enterprise marketspace catch it. (look for more as the testing methodology matures and we host a BIG roundup of firewalls) Usage scenarios?The Small Office/Branch Office (SOBO) environment isn’t any less important than the home office. They still need secure remote management, they still need to integrate nicely into a unified management system, they still need to have a reasonable key management facility, they MUST be able to integrate into the enterprise authentication system, they can’t let crud into the enterprise network through a side door, and most of all they need to stay up. The world is moving away from dedicated telecom (ie. Frac T-1, frame relay, etc) to public ISP’s like cable modems and DSL. The downside has been the loss of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) that you got with the dedicated line. SonicWall is solving this by providing WWAN failover with dynamic DNS so that you can have a reasonable expectation that your Point of Sale (POS or any other mission critical app) isn’t going down. Ev-Do versus EDGE in the US?Just about everyone agrees that while EDGE isn’t anywhere near as fast as EV-DO, EDGE just has more coverage. I personally chose EDGE since I tend to do a bit of international travel and having a quad band EDGE/UMTS card just made a lot of sense. However if you want the speed and you’re only going to use this is major metro areas, EV-DO is just plain faster at this time. Will that change, sure…will the new HSDPA standard surpass EV-DO, yeah sure someday. Keep in mind that things change…most of the US is in the 2.5G to 3.0G service range BUT ONLY in major metro areas. HSDPA is more like 3.5G and will of course suffer the same lack of coverage that EV-DO has now.The bottom line is that if you have a remote location that just can’t afford to be out of contact, being able to automagically flip over from your DSL/Cable provider to a WWAN card can save you a whole heck of a lot of lost business. So while I may have caught your attention with the gimick of a solar powered backback HotSpot, there really are good business reasons to have a WWAN backup. /brian cheeBrian Chee is a Senior Contributing Editor with InfoWorld Magazine and is a researcher with the University of Hawaii’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). Technology Industry