This is the topic of an Interop panel featuring Anthony James, Fortinet vice president of products, and folks from Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks and Ashton, Metzler & Associates. The panel will be at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow at Mandalay Bay, Breakers E room.

Here’s the overview:

The traditional wide-area network (WAN) firewall makes two flawed assumptions. One assumption is that the information contained in the first packet in a connection is sufficient to identify the application. The second assumption is that the transmission control protocol (TCP) and user datagram protocol (UDP) well-known port numbers are always used as intended. These are just two of the issues that suggest that the traditional WAN firewall cannot effectively support the current environment. In this session, the panelists will describe the limitations of the traditional WAN firewall, and identify what functionality firewalls need to implement to overcome these limitations.

According to the Wide Area Networking Alert from Jim Metzler and Steve Taylor, all presenters have been seriously discouraged from turning this into a “death by PowerPoint” session, ensuring an informative time.

“In particular, the speakers have been tasked with being very specific about what works today, and what does not work and identify why. They have also been tasked to be specific in terms of their company’s approaches to implementing a WAN firewall so that the attendees come to understand where they agree on an approach, and where they don’t.”

More information can be found on the Interop site.