Feb 25, 2010 5:01 PM,

Crossbeam claims fastest firewall, targets mobile networks

By Rich Karpinski

Checkpoint firewall running on Crossbeam chassis simulates real-world conditions of overtaxed wireless network, vendor claims

Security vendor Crossbeam Systems said today it has stress tested a software-based security firewall running on its carrier class switch and carrier-grade hardware chassis and delivered the “world’s fastest firewall performance,” it claimed.

More on this Topic

Industry News

Blogs

Briefing Room

Crossbeam said it used simulation software BreakingPoint Elite to conduct the test, which measures the resiliency of network and security equipment. The test involved Crossbeams X-Series security platform running Checkpoint’s R70 Security Gateway. Crossbeam will demonstrate the tests next week at the RSA security conference, the vendor said.

Mobile operators facing high data demands are finding themselves faced with tough security platform throughput challenges, as mobile devices typically open up many more real-time IP sessions that would be expected. Crossbeam has deployed its hardware switch/blade chassis in a number of operators to meet just such demands (see: How O2 secured its network for the iPhone).

“New devices like the iPhone are great for the carriers, but they also represent a great new challenge for the network as well,” Crossbeam CMO Jim Freeze said in a recent interview.

The BreakingPoint simulation tested the firewall under real-world network conditions including: native application traffic, real-time security attacks and millions of users at live network speeds. Specifically, the tests simulated the heavy traffic environment of a mobile operator using HTTP traffic and 96-byte packets, the typical type and size generated by smart phone devices. The tests confirmed that the X-Series can process 18 million packets per second under the worst traffic conditions, providing full firewall protection to secure millions of simultaneous connections, Crossbeam said.

The Crossbeam X-Series security platform is a hardware-based, carrier-class chassis and application layer switch. Users can virtualize a variety of third-party security applications to run on the system to meet high levels of throughput and reliability requirements, such as on a mobile operator network.