Does FireWall-1 Introduce Performance Degradation?
FireWall-1 introduces practically no performance degradation. Measurements conducted by several independent testers could not detect any significant decrease in network bandwidth, even at high speeds such as Ethernet and ATM. The tests were conducted by Stanford University, Open Computing magazine, Sun, and CheckPoint. The setup included standard and low-end workstations with complex security rules. At 10 Mbps the bandwidth degradation measured was about 3% and the latency was equivalent to a typical latency introduced by a gateway host. The theoretical model developed by CheckPoint to predict performance degradation states that the impact approaches zero. This model has been empirically validated. The performance is even better at lower data rates, such as T1 or 56 kbps. For further information on this subject, refer to Rik Farrow’s review in the October 1994 issue of Open Computing. In contrast, encryption does have a minor but measurable impact on performance. The Accounting and Liv
