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Friday, September 5, 2008
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Clear Choice Test Return to main article: UTM performance takes a hit

UTM Firewalls: Your mileage will vary with your choice of protection

Our performance testing led us to a number of conclusions about deploying unified threat management firewalls in an enterprise setting. Antivirus scanning slows all but Fortinet's UTM firewall performance dramatically. IBM/ISS' Proventia was the only box to toe the speed line with an IPS up and running. Protecting clients is much more performance-intensive than protecting servers, highlighting the need to tune any IPS carefully. Combining IPS and antivirus in an enterprise UTM firewall causes a huge performance hit and brings most systems down to a small fraction of their total performance capabilities.
Performance numbers are reported in megabit/second throughput rates.
Vendor Product Raw speed IPS-server IPS-client Anti-virus Antivirus+IPS-server Antivirus+IPS-client
Astaro ASG 425a 243 180 166 69 21 17.2
Check Point UTM-1 2050 754 221 40 98 95 38
Cisco ASA5540 with SSM-20 IPS module 662 118 118 NS NS NS
Crossbeam C25 1,000+ 122 28 58 54 27
Fortinet FortiGate 3600A 1,000+ 624 624 524 520 520
IBM System x3650 1,000+ 816 190 NS NS NS
IBM/ISS Proventia MX5010 1,000+ 978 978 384 298 298
Juniper Networks ISG-1000 1,000+ 442 355 NS NS NS
Juniper Networks SSG-520M 1,000+ 426 166 157 138 98
Nokia IP290 1,000+ 156 29 54 33 25
Secure Computing Sidewinder 2150D with IPS acceleration 826 559 581 396 286 292
SonicWall Pro 5060 587 318 318 208 208 208
WatchGuard Firebox Peak X8500e 1,000+ 160 79 193 185 177
NS means the device did not support optional antivirus scanning feature and therefore could not be tested.

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