on the performance of middleboxes
This paper presents a preliminary performance analysis of a complex middlebox infrastructure in a real-world production environment that serves several thousand people. While prevalent, middleboxes (firewalls, NATs, etc.) have yet to be systematically measured. This paper makes two contributions: (i) we outline several methodologies and metrics by which to measure middleboxes and (ii) we offer preliminary application-layer measurements of one particular production middlebox system. We show that the middlebox infrastructure in question offers a mixed bag of performance implications (both positive and negative). In addition, we quantify several failure modes introduced by the middlebox infrastructure.
performance middleboxes paper performance analysis complexity infrastructure product environments firewalls systems measurement methodology metrication posit failure applications layer tcp performance