Fortinet doubled down on wireless WAN this week with the launch of its first dual-modem SD-WAN appliance.

The FortiExtender 212F integrates with the security vendor’s FortiGate line of SD-WAN-equipped firewalls and provides up to 600 Mb/s of throughput over a 4G LTE connection. However, the 212F’s claim to fame is its dual modems, which enable simultaneous cellular connections to two carrier networks, thus enabling traffic to be steered across redundant WAN links.

Each modem can be equipped with two SIM cards allowing the appliance to switch between multiple carriers — two at any given moment — to ensure uninterrupted communications and consistent performance.

Alongside the 212F, the newly introduced FortiExtender 101F is designed for thin-branch deployments with more modest throughput requirements. The appliance can sustain network speeds up to 300 Mb/s over a single 4G LTE connection.

Unlike competing wireless WAN platforms, Fortinet intentionally separated the modem from the routing and firewall appliance for greater installation flexibility.

“SD-WAN appliances are often stored in places like cabinets and basements, which can hinder cellular reception and render the modem useless,” Fortinet VP of Products Nirav Shah and Senior Product Marketing Manager Pat Vitalone wrote in a joint blog post.

While it’s possible to add external antennas and cabling, these introduce unnecessary complexity and can degrade the signal. By separating the two, Fortinet can avoid these headaches, the duo wrote.

The new appliances join Fortinet’s existing line of FortiExtender cellular gateways and firewalls announced this spring.

This includes Fortinet’s 511F-5 — its fastest wireless WAN appliance — that supports connectivity over sub-6 GHz 5G networks.

“When 5G comes, it’s possible that people will start using it as one of the primary connections because of the capacity, throughput, speed, and less latency,” Fortinet CMO John Maddison told SDxCentral in an earlier interview.

Alongside cellular gateways, Fortinet is also dabbling in 5G packet core security with its FortiGate 7121F. The high throughputs and expanded perimeter of 5G infrastructure drove development of a higher-performance firewall, he explained.

The system is built around the vendor’s custom security processing unit ASIC, which can handle firewall throughputs up to 1.9 Tb/s, threat prevention and SSL inspection of more than 500 Gb/s, and as many as 1 billion sessions at any given time.

“Nokia and Ericsson and these people build radios, and they build radio access, and they build packet core pieces, but we’re the only company to build out something like this of this scale from a security firewall perspective,” Maddison boasted.

Fortinet is far from the first vendor to embrace wireless WAN functionality.

Cradlepoint, a pioneer in the field, launched its first cellular-equipped SD-WAN appliances more than a year ago. This summer it updated its E-3000 appliance with onboard 5G networking functionality, via twin modems, which Cradlepoint says makes using cellular as a primary WAN link viable for more customers.

Similarly, Cisco announced its own 5G cellular gateways for its Catalyst line of service routers in January.

Like Fortinet’s 5G-equipped FortiExtender, Cisco’s gateway also features a sub-6 GHz 5G radio designed for high-throughput, low-latency communications with any of the company’s Catalyst routers or edge appliances.