Fortinet FortiBridge Bypass Appliances
Ensuring availability of network resources

Overview:

You are faced with the challenge of securing your network while also ensuring that it is always available. This could mean that you are forced to choose network availability over ensuring that all traffic is inspected for malicious activity. You are already using high availability features of the security infrastructure, where a system fails over to either an active or standby unit. While this can reduce the risk of a network outage and still providing security services, to further reduce the risk of a network outage, additional steps have to be taken. To preserve availability in the event of a power failure or a device malfunction, bypassing the device altogether with a fail-to-wire solution can ensure network continuity at times when security cannot be provided.

To ensure mission-critical network continuity, FortiBridge bypass appliances automatically bridge network traffic, re-routing network traffic around inline security infrastructure in the event of a power outage or system fault. The FortiBridge-2002 appliance is designed for 10/100/1000 networks, the FortiBridge-2002F is designed for 1 GbE networks (SFP or LC 850nm fiber-based ), and theFortiBridge-2002X is designed for 10 GbE networks (SFP+ or LC 850nm fiber-based ). All appliances provide bypass functionality for two network segments.

Fortinet Bypass Modules Benefits:

• Fail-to-Wire bypass functionality maximizes network uptime by automatically re-routing traffic in the event of a power outage or any other type of event that would cause an inline security device to degrade the availability of the network segment.
• The 1-RU appliance form factor allows you to add bypass functionality to any existing inline security system, including FortiGate® multi-threat security systems.
• Remote configuration and monitoring allow you to monitor and control the bypass status of network segments remotely, with the ability to view mode of operation, manually switch the appliance into bypass or normal operation mode, and configure thresholds for automatic bypass fail-to-wire.

• FortiBridge-2001 appliance provides four 10/100/1000 interfaces
• FortiBridge-2001F provides two SFP 1 GbE interfaces, two fiber (LC, 850nm) 1 GbE interfaces
• FortiBridge-2002 appliance provides eight 10/100/1000 interfaces
• FortiBridge-2002F appliance provides four SFP 1 GbE interfaces, four fiber (LC, 850nm) 1 GbE interfaces.
• FortiBridge-2002X appliance provides four SFP+ 10 GbE interfaces, four fiber (LC, 850nm) 10 GbE interfaces

Operating in transparent mode during normal operation, these appliances automatically bridge network traffic in the event of a system failure or power outage to ensure mission critical network continuity.