British ISP offers self-managing MPLS box

A British ISP has developed a software-based security and networking box that enables companies to self-manage their MPLS connections.

ControlZone, which has been developed by London-based Pro-Net , has been described by the company as the "world's first self-managed cloud-based firewall" , although as CTO Paul Spiby said it was a lot more than that. "We offer a firewall, web content filtering, IDS, traffic analysis and VPN in a single device." He said that because the product was cloud-managed there was no need to install software at the enterprise's office -everything is managed by the service provider.

One of the key advantages for customers, Spiby said, was that there was no longer any need for an enterprise to inform the ISP when wishing to make changes to the configuration. "Previously, a business would have to send a change-request to the ISP to make alterations - and have to pay for them - ControlZone means that the enterprise no longer has to do that, it make the changes itself."

Spiby said that ControlZone would be particularly appealing for companies with multiple sites as inter-site network management is also offered on the same device, "one customer of ours is running six sites off the device," he said. The product is only available as part of a Pro-Net contract said Spiby, adding that the pricing for ControlZone was £5 per month per IP address.