Gen 7 NSa models (NSa 2700, 3700, 4700, 5700, 6700) use SonicWall's first Gen 7 hardware platform running SonicOS 7. Gen 7.1 models (NSa 2800, 3800, 4800, 5800, 6800) use updated hardware with significantly higher firewall throughput, larger DPI connection tables, greater TLS/SSL inspection capacity, and more storage at every tier. If you are purchasing new hardware today, the Gen 7.1 equivalent delivers materially better performance for a comparable price.

The NSa 2700 or 2800 fits most organizations with 100 to 500 concurrent users and moderate internet throughput. The NSa 3700 or 3800 works well for 500 to 2,000 users with heavier traffic and a need for more interface density. The NSa 4700 and 4800 suit organizations with 1,000 to 5,000 users and multi-gigabit uplinks. The NSa 5700 through 6800 are designed for large enterprise and campus core deployments with tens of thousands of users. Contact a Firewalls.com engineer for a free sizing recommendation.

The NSa series covers mid-size to large enterprise environments in a standard 1U rack chassis with throughput from 5 Gbps to 55 Gbps. The NSsp series is SonicWall's high-end platform, with throughput from 47 Gbps to 105 Gbps and features such as 100G interfaces, higher VLAN counts (1,024 vs 512), and clustering configurations suited for service providers and very large enterprise data centers. The NSa 6800 and NSsp 11700 are the natural dividing line between the two series.

Yes. All NSa models support active-passive high availability with stateful session failover. The NSa 4700 and higher support active-active clustering for load-balanced throughput. High availability requires a second licensed unit of the same model. Firewalls.com can quote HA pairs and assist with the initial configuration as part of our professional services.

Multi-rate SFP+ ports negotiate automatically at 10G, 5G, 2.5G, or 1G depending on the transceiver or cable installed. This lets you connect a mix of legacy 1GbE switches, newer 2.5G and 5G devices, and full 10G uplinks from the same port bank without separate adapter modules. It is particularly useful in environments that are migrating from 1G to 10G in stages.

Site-to-site VPN tunnel counts range from 2,000 on the NSa 2700 and 2800 to 6,000 on the NSa 5700 through 6800. SSL VPN concurrent session counts start at 500 on the 2700 and 2800, reach 2,000 on the 4700, and cap at 1,500 on the 5700 and higher (with licensing). IPsec VPN throughput ranges from 2.1 Gbps on the NSa 2700 to 19 Gbps on the NSa 6700.