The new systems from iPolicy (Fremont, Calif.) will be positioned in the market against combined firewall and intrusion detection systems from a variety of security specialists, putting iPolicy in the center of security application markets for its small form-factor family.

Chief executive Prabhu Goel said the new systems, dubbed "intrusion prevention firewalls," are based on Pentium processors for all control-plane functions. This differs from the high-end 6000, which uses up to 14 dedicated network processors.

Firewall and IPS throughput ranges from 140 Mbits/s for the 2100, to 350 Mbits/s for the 3300. The 3300 model is configured to support virtual private networks based on IPsec. The 2100 and 2200 models do not have VPN capability. The 2000 family does support three Fast Ethernet connections, while the 3000 family supports an equal number of Gigabit Ethernet ports.