FortiGate
With its underlying FortiOS firmware, FortiGate is the product at the foundation of Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution. A key differentiation from other SD-WAN vendors is that the FortiGate Secure SD-WAN platform provides the following key capabilities:
- The intelligence to decide the best path for a specific application
- The ability to build the most efficient overlay network in the SD-WAN architecture
The above capabilities don’t require a centralized controller as do most of the traditional SD-WAN vendors.
FortiGate is multitenant at its very core. Virtual domain (VDOM) technology is a testament to this statement, enabling a single, secure gateway instance to be sliced into potentially hundreds of individual gateways.
VDOM technology enables us to create a separation of duty between infrastructure and general management and the separation of access policies for all tenants. This is of paramount importance for managed service providers (MSPs), pivoting away from a single instance per customer model (which is still possible with FortiGate). VDOM technology enables MSPs to benefit from the unique hardware acceleration exclusive to Fortinet FortiGates.
For more details on the FortiGate SD-WAN capabilities, see Technical background.
FortiGate also:
- Delivers advanced routing support (RIP, BGP, OSPF, and more)
- Participates in virtual private network (VPN) pairing as a spoke or hub (concentrator)
- Brings WAN optimization by means of protocol optimization and byte and object caching
- Supports traffic shaping and packet priority to ensure that business-critical applications take precedence
The following sections describe some of the key functionality: