Re: Requirements for IPv6 Firewalls

[David Newman <dnewman () networktest com>]

On 4/17/14, 5:51 AM, Dobbins, Roland wrote:

> > - packets per second
> >      - Firewall Level
> >      - Hosts level
>
> This is getting into QoS territory . . .
>
> > - packet size information
>
> Concur - packet-length.

The use of RFC 2544-esque metrics for firewall performance testing
mostly benefits ill-informed or unscrupulous firewall marketeers, who
send 1500-byte UDP packets and then brag about excellent performance.

For firewalls handling TCP traffic, upper-layer traffic metrics such as
HTTP object size, concurrent connection capacity, and connection setup
rate are a lot more meaningful.

The RFC 2544/2889 approach is OK if you only ever use your firewall as a
router or a switch. The performance of a firewall used as an L2-L7
device should be measured with L2-L7 traffic.

dn