Alcatel-Lucent’s VPN Firewall Brick® is "Network Computing" Test Winner 2007

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) has won this year’s two-part benchmark test of security appliances conducted by the German trade magazine Network Computing. Alcatel-Lucent’s VPN Firewall Brick® 1200 took first place in both the VPN test and the firewall and quality-of-service test, and came through as the overall winner.

The tests, conducted by the “RealWorld Labs” of Network Computing at the University of Applied Sciences Stralsund, Germany, under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Bernhard G. Stütz, were designed to examine the security appliances of industry vendors for their suitability of high-performance protection of corporate networks and network segments. The tests looked at the performance of the appliances in VPN and in firewall mode, plus the quality-of-service (QoS). The RealWorld Labs team used a virtual test company from the automotive accessories industry with multiple sites and an Intranet, which was also accessed by partner companies.

VPN performance
In the VPN performance category, Alcatel-Lucent was the only vendor to achieve a B grade (on a scale from A to D, where A represents the top rating), and was thus significantly ahead of the rest of the field. In one series of measurements the VPN UDP throughput was measured. In an alternative throughput measurement, called “UDP mix” in the report, 50 percent of the respective total load was sent through the VPN tunnel unencrypted. In unidirectional VPN mode with 64-byte packets the VPN Firewall Brick® 1200 achieved a maximum throughput of some 25 percent, or 250 Mbit/s. Here Alcatel-Lucent set a very high standard. No other test appliance achieved this value.

Firewall performance
For the firewall UDP throughput test in multidirectional mode, the VPN Firewall Brick® was significantly ahead of its competitors for the small frames. It scored the best result in the comparison, achieving 390 Mbit/s per port and transmission direction. With the second-largest frame format the VPN Firewall Brick® achieved 85 percent of the maximum possible throughput; with even larger data frames the system achieved wire speed from end to end.

Another measurement involved the connection capacity in Mbit/s in firewall mode. With over 2,033,000 connections, in this case the VPN Firewall Brick® reached the hardware limit of the measuring equipment in the test lab.

Quality of Service (QoS)
In addition, the RealWorld Labs team also tested the correct data prioritization. For this the test engineers defined four priorities, applied the full load at two input ports, and addressed the data streams to one output port. Alcatel-Lucent’s VPN Firewall Brick® 1200 functioned absolutely correctly in both tests, and did not incur any data losses in the highest priority class.

The Network Computing editorial team concluded that the requirements placed on security appliances have changed in view of increasing triple-play traffic. Security and performance alone are not enough, real-time capability is needed as well. By its performance in the VPN and firewall tests, the VPN Firewall Brick® 1200 from Alcatel-Lucent has demonstrated that it copes with these requirements best of all from among the systems that were tested.

For further information about the VPN Firewall Brick® 1200 solution, visit Alcatel-Lucent’s web site on:

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/wps/portal/products/detail?LMSG_CABINET=Solution_Product_Catalog&LMSG_CONTENT_FILE=Products/Product_Detail_000177.xml

For further information about Network Computing tests, read Network Computing articles titled:
“Stau im Tunnel”, April 25, 2007 (on VPN performance) http://www.networkcomputing.de/cms/17698.0.html and “Geruhsamer Brandschutz”, May 30, 2007 (on Firewall performance and QoS) http://www.networkcomputing.de/cms/17948.0.html