Re: Question on Cisco ASA's... do all the features slow it down?

[jacob c <jctx09 () yahoo com>]

John,
   
  My original reply based on the assumption that you were thinking about the ASA box because you wanted a UTM style 
box. If that is the case, my opinion is that Cisco is always behind the curve when it comes to their secuirty boxes. 
The ASA itself is a box itself that came out two years AFTER everyone else was already producing UTM appliances. 
Therefore, vendors, like Juniper and Fortinet have been a multi-function box for quite a while and they are very mature 
platforms. Also, you can't completely manage an ASA through the GUI. You will still have to learn lots of CLI.
   
  All I'm saying, is that it shouldn't be that hard. Technology should be simpler once it's been around for a while and 
it is with other vendors. Please keep in mind that I am NOT anti-cisco. Feature for feature, they still make the best 
routers and switches around and their VoIP solution is pretty mature nowadays too. I just don't think much of their 
security appliances. I actually work for a consulting company and I sell/support all three vendor's appliances.
   
  In the end, if you want a UTM style box, which is the current trend, research your options besides Cisco. This 
includes browing the Cisco-nsp forum as well and you will see enough validation for my claims. 
   
  Thanks,
  Jacob

"John G." <isaac737 () gmail com> wrote:
  greetings and salutations.  peace to the nations.

well, i don't understand really what you mean by the packet sizes and first match vs. last match.  i am more a firewall 
apprentice than firewall wizard.

what i can definitely agree with is the performance data that a certain company from the Bay Area says their firewalls 
can do around 200 Megabits/second.   we are seeing 80% CPU load on the firewall (watched via Nagios and Cacti) when we 
push around 10 Megabits/second. 

how is this even a useful metric is my question?  200 Megabits/second with a default ALLOW ANY to ANY ruleset on both 
in and out??  :P

-jg





  On Dec 10, 2007 9:42 PM, Carson Gaspar < carson () taltos org> wrote:
    jacob c wrote: 
> 1) Firewall performance figures from all vendors are highly overrated on
> the datasheets.


If you want to get a certain firewall company to complain to your senior
management that you're being "mean" and try and get you fired, demand 64 
byte packet last-match performance numbers (as opposed to the 1500+ byte
first match numbers they'll try and give you). Also be very careful to
ask about behaviour when this limit is exceeded. It was very informative 
to see which vendors were packet rate limited and which were bit rate
limited. The performance scaling with ruleset size was also interesting.
Sadly I don't know of any vendors that publish this data openly. I do 
know that you can tell a good one by their reaction when you ask for it.

(And, no, I'm not making this up. But I'll refrain from naming names
since they can afford to sue me out of existence.)

--
Carson
    
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