The NetScreen-500SP is optimized for environments providing managed security services. The NetScreen-500SP comes complete with two DC or AC power supplies, two GBIC interface modules, and software support for up to 25 Virtual Systems and 100 VLANs.

The NetScreen-500ES systems are optimized for large enterprise environments and collocation facilities requiring fast firewall and VPN performance, reliability, ease of management, and the potential to upgrade to 25 security domains. The NetScreen-500ES systems are offered with DC or AC power supplies and GBIC or 10/100 fast Ethernet interface modules. All NetScreen-500ES systems can be upgraded to five, 10, or 25 Virtual Systems.

The NetScreen-500 is a high performance, reliable, and highly redundant platform. To address performance, the NetScreen-500 is designed around the custom, purpose-built GigaScreen ASIC, which provides accelerated encryption and policy look-ups. In addition, there are two processing busses to separate management traffic from traffic passing through the system. This prevents high availability and other management traffic from impacting throughput performance. 

To address reliability and redundancy concerns, the NetScreen-500 has minimal moving parts, and offers a hot-swappable fan module (made up of four fans), and redundant power supplies. In addition, the NetScreen-500 can be set up in a high-availability topology with a fail-over system that is fully synchronized with firewall sessions and VPN tunnel information. 

Summary of hardware components:

• Four interface module bays supporting GBIC or dual-port 10/100 Fast Ethernet interface modules   
• Two DB9 serial ports, 1 for console and 1 for an external analog modem   
• One 10/100 out-of-band management port   
• Two redundant 10/100 high availability ports   
• Hot-swappable fan module   
• Two redundant hot-swappable power supply trays accommodating AC or DC power   
• LCD display for basic configuration and status alerts 

All this, in a 2U, 19-inch rack mountable chassis.

The programmable LCD can be used to set basic system functionality, such as:

• Interface IP addresses, including the management interface  
• Manageability options on those interfaces  
• Alarm thresholds and status reports  
• Can be disabled to prevent tampering with the device

Traffic management allows a network administrator to monitor, analyze, and allocate bandwidth utilized by various types of network traffic in real time; ensuring business-critical traffic is never compromised or web surfing.

• Manage based on IP Address, user, application, or time of day  
• Set guaranteed bandwidth and maximum bandwidth  
• Prioritize traffic with eight prioritization levels

The NetScreen-500 can integrate with the Websense™ content filtering solution, to block inappropriate content and defer personal browsing to non-work hours.