Benchmarking Methodology for Network Security Device Performance

TBD

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

TBD.

Test setup defined in this document will be applicable to all of the benchmarking test cases described in Section 7.

Testbed configuration MUST ensure that any performance implications that are discovered during the benchmark testing aren’t due to the inherent physical network limitations such as number of physical links and forwarding performance capabilities (throughput and latency) of the network devise in the testbed. For this reason, this document recommends to avoid external devices such as switch and router in the testbed as possible. In the typical deployment, the security devices (DUT/SUT) will not have a large number of entries in MAC or ARP tables, which impact the actual DUT/SUT performance due to MAC and ARP table lookup processes. Therefore, depend on number of used IP address in client and server side, it is recommended to connect Layer 3 device(s) between test equipment and DUT/SUT as shown in figure 1. If the test equipment is capable to emulate layer 3 routing functionality and there is no need for test equipment ports aggregation, it is recommended to configure the test setup as shown in figure 2.

+-------------------+ +-----------+ +--------------------+ |Aggregation Switch/| | | | Aggregation Switch/| | Router +------+ DUT/SUT +------+ Router | | | | | | | +----------+--------+ +-----------+ +----------+---------+ | | | | +-----------+-----------+ +------------+----------+ | | | | | +-------------------+ | | +-------------------+ | | | Emulated Router(s)| | | | Emulated Router(s)| | | | (Optional) | | | | (Optional) | | | +-------------------+ | | +-------------------+ | | +-------------------+ | | +-------------------+ | | | Clients | | | | Servers | | | +-------------------+ | | +-------------------+ | | | | | | Test Equipment | | Test Equipment | +-----------------------+ +-----------------------+

+-----------------------+ +-----------------------+ | +-------------------+ | +-----------+ | +-------------------+ | | | Emulated Router(s)| | | | | | Emulated Router(s)| | | | (Optional) | +----- DUT/SUT +-----+ (Optional) | | | +-------------------+ | | | | +-------------------+ | | +-------------------+ | +-----------+ | +-------------------+ | | | Clients | | | | Servers | | | +-------------------+ | | +-------------------+ | | | | | | Test Equipment | | Test Equipment | +-----------------------+ +-----------------------+

An unique DUT/SUT configuration MUST be used for all of the benchmarking tests described in section 7. Since each DUT/SUT will have their own unique configuration, users SHOULD configure their device with the same parameters that would be used in the actual deployment of the device or a typical deployment. Also it is mandatory to enable all the security features on the DUT/SUT in order to achieve maximum security coverage for a specific deployment scenario. This document attempts to define the recommended security features which SHOULD be consistently enabled for all test cases. The table below describes the recommended sets of feature list which SHOULD be configured on the DUT/SUT. In order to improve repeatability, a summary of the DUT configuration including description of all enabled DUT/SUT features MUST be published with the benchmarking results.

+----------------------------------------------------+ | Device | +---------------------------------+--+----+---+------+ | | | | | | SSL | | NGFW |NGIPS|AD| WAF|BPS|Broker| +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | |Included |Added to| Future test standards | | DUT Features |Feature|in initial|future | to be de^eloped | | | |Scope |Scope | | +---------------------------------------------------+---+---+---+------+ | SSL Inspection | x | | x | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | IDS/IPS | x | x | | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Web Filtering | x | | x | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Anti^irus | x | x | | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Anti Spyware | x | x | | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Anti Botnet | x | x | | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | DLP | x | | x | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | DDoS | x | | x | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | SSL Certificate | x | | x | | | | | | | Validation | | | | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Logging and | x | x | | | | | | | | Reporting | | | | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Application | x | x | | | | | | | | Identification | | | | | | | | | +-----------------+-------+----------+--------+-----+---+---+---+------+ It is also recommended to configure a realistic number of access policy rules on the DUT/SUT. This document attempts to determine the number of access policy rules for three different class of DUT/SUT. The document classified the DUT/SUT based on its performance capability. The access rule defined in the, MUST be configured from top to bottom in correct order. The configured access policy rule MUST NOT block the test traffic used for the performance test.

In general, test equipment allows configuring parameters in different protocol level. These parameters thereby influencing the traffic flows which will be offered and impacting performance measurements. This document attempts to explicitly specify which test equipment parameters SHOULD be configurable, any such parameter(s) MUST be noted in the test report.

This section specifies which parameters SHOULD be considerable while configuring emulated clients using test equipment. Also this section specifies the recommended values for certain parameters.

The TCP stack SHOULD use a TCP Reno variant, which include congestion avoidance, back off and windowing, retransmission and recovery on every TCP connection between client and server endpoints. The default IPv4 and IPv6 MSS segments size MUST be set to 1460 bytes and 1440 bytes and a TX and RX receive windows of 32768 bytes. Delayed ACKs are permitted, but it SHOULD be limited to either a 200 mSec delay timeout or 3000 in bytes before a forced ACK. Up to 3 retries SHOULD be allowed before a timeout event is declared. All traffic MUST set the TCP PSH flag to high. The source port range SHOULD be in the range of 1024 – 65535. Internal timeout SHOULD be dynamically scalable per RFC 793..

The sum of the client IP space SHOULD contain the following attributes. The traffic blocks SHOULD consist of multiple unique, continuous static address blocks. A default gateway is permitted. The IPv4 ToS byte should be set to ‘00’. The following equation can be used to determine the required total number of client IP address. Desired total number of client IP = Target throughput [Mbit/s] / Throughput per IP address [Mbit/s] 6-7 Mbps per IP= 1,400–1,700 IPs per 10Gbit/s throughput 0.1-0.2 Mbps per IP = 50,000–100,000 IPs per 10Gbit/s throughput Based on deployment and usecase scenario, client IP addresses SHOULD be distributed between IPv4 and IPv6 type. This document recommends using the following ratio(s) between IPv4 and IPv6: 100 % IPv4, no IPv6 80 % IPv4, 20 % IPv6 50 % IPv4, 50 % IPv6 0 % IPv4, 100 % IPv6

The emulated web browser contains attributes that will materially affect how traffic is loaded. The objective is to emulate a modern, typical browser attributes to improve realism of the result set. The emulated browser must negotiate HTTP 1.1 with persistence. The browser will open up to 6 TCP connections per Server endpoint IP at any time depending on how many sequential transactions are needed to be processed. Within the TCP connection multiple transactions can be processed if the emulated browser has available connections, for example where transactions to the same server endpoint IP exceed 6 or are non-sequential. The browser must advertise a User-Agent header. Headers will be sent uncompressed. The browser should enforce content length validation.

The test traffic shall be a realistic blend of encrypted and clear traffic. For encrypted traffic, the following attributes shall define the negotiated encryption parameters. The tests must use TLSv1.2 or higher with a record size of 16383, commonly used cipher suite and key strength. Session reuse or ticket resumption may be used for subsequent connections to the same Server endpoint IP. The client endpoint must send TLS Extension SNI information when opening up a security tunnel. Server certificate validation should be disabled. If the DUT/SUT doesn’t perform SSL inspection, cipher suite and certificate selection for the test is irrelevant. However, it is recommended to use latest and not deprecated certificates, in order to mimic real world traffic.

This document attempts to specify which parameters should be considerable while configuring emulated backend servers using test equipment.

The TCP stack SHOULD use a TCP Reno variant, which include congestion avoidance, back off and windowing, retransmission and recovery on every TCP connection between client and server endpoints. The default IPv4 MSS segment size MUST be set to 1460 bytes and a TX and RX receive windows of at least 32768 bytes. Delayed ACKs are permitted but SHOULD be limited to either a 200 mSec delay timeout or 3k in bytes before a forced ACK. Up to 2 retries SHOULD be allowed before a timeout event is declared. All traffic must set the TCP PSH flag to high. The source port range SHOULD be in the range of 1024 – 65535. Internal timeout should be dynamically scalable per RFC 793.

The server IP blocks should consist of unique, continuous static address blocks with one IP per Server FQDN endpoint per test port. The IPv4 ToS byte should be set to ‘00’. The source mac address of the server endpoints shall be the same emulating routed behavior. Each Server FQDN should have it’s own unique IP address. The Server IP addressing should be fixed to the same number of FQDN entries.

The emulated server pool for HTTP should listen on TCP port 80 and emulated HTTP version 1.1 with persistence. For HTTPS server, the pool must have the same basic attributes of an HTTP server pool plus attributes for SSL/TLS. The server must advertise a server type. For HTTPS server, TLS 1.2 or higher must be used with a record size of 16,383 bytes and ticket resumption or Session ID reuse enabled. The server must listen on port TCP 443. The server shall serve a 2048 server SSL certificate to the client. It is required that the HTTPS server also check Host SNI information with the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). Client certificate validation should be disabled. If the DUT/SUT doesn’t perform SSL inspection, cipher suite and certificate selection for the test is irrelevant. However, it is recommended to use latest and not deprecated certificates, in order to mimic real world traffic.

The section describes the traffic pattern between the client and server endpoints. At the beginning of the test, the server endpoint initializes and will be in a ready to accept connection state including initialization of the TCP stack as well as bound HTTP and HTTPS servers. When a client endpoint is needed, it will initialize and be given attributes such as the MAC and IP address. The behavior of the client is to sweep though the given server IP space, sequentially generating a recognizable service by the DUT. Thus, a balanced, mesh between client endpoints and server endpoints will be generated in a client port server port combination. Each client endpoint performs the same actions as other endpoints, with the difference being the source IP of the client endpoint and the target server IP pool. The client shall use Fully Qualified Domain Names in Host Headers and for TLS 1.2 Server Name Indication (SNI).

Client endpoints are independent of other clients that are concurrently executing. When a client endpoint initiate traffic, this section will describe how the steps though different services. Once initialized, the user should randomly hold (perform no operation) for a few milliseconds to allow for better randomization of start of client traffic. The client will then either open up a new TCP connection or connect to a TCP persistence stack still open to that specific server. At any point that the service profile may require encryption, a TLS 1.2 encryption tunnel will form presenting the URL request to the server. The server will then perform an SNI name check with the proposed FQDN compared to the domain embedded in the certificate. Only when correct, will the server process the object. The initial object to the server does not have a fixed size, its size is based on for example the URL path length. Up to six additional sub-URLs (Objects on the service page) may be requested simultaneously. This may or may not be to the same server IP as the initial URL. Each sub-object will also use a conical FQDN and URL path, as observed in the traffic mix used. The traffic mix in the appendix table is represented by the actions of each and every client endpoint. Therefor the instantaneous percent of mix will vary, but the overall mix through the duration of the test will be fixed. This is based on the number of active users, TCP recovery mechanism, etc.

The loading of traffic will be described in this section. The loading of an traffic load profile has five distinct phases: Init, ramp up, sustain, ramp down/close, and collection. Within the Init phase, test bed devices including the client and server endpoints should negotiate layer 2-3 connectivity such as MAC learning and ARP. Only after successful MAC learning or ARP resolution shall the test iteration move to the next phase. No measurements are made in this phase. The minimum recommended time for init phase is 5 seconds. During this phase the emulated clients SHOULD NOT initiate any sessions with the DUT/SUT, in contrast, the emulated servers should be ready to accept requests from DUT/SUT or from emulated clients. In the ramp up phase, the test equipment should start to generate the test traffic. It should use a set approximate number of unique client IP addresses actively to generate traffic. The traffic should ramp from zero to desired target throughput objective. The duration for the ramp up phase must be configured long enough, so that the test equipment does not overwhelm DUT/SUT’s supported performance metrics, namely: connection setup rate, concurrent connection and application transaction. The recommended time duration for the ramp up phase is 180-300 seconds. No measurements are made in this phase. In the sustain phase, the test equipment should keep to generate traffic at constant rate for a constant number of active client IPs. The recommended time duration for sustain phase is 600 seconds. This is the phase where measurements occur. In the ramp down/close phase, no new connection is established and no measurements are made. The recommend duration of this phase is 180- 300 seconds. The last phase is administrative and will be when the tester merges and collates the report data.

This section recommends steps to control the test environment and test equipment, specifically focusing on virtualized environments and virtualized test equipment. Ensure that any ancillary switching or routing functions between the system under test and the test equipment do not limit the performance of the traffic generator. This is specifically important for virtualized components (vSwitches, vRouters). Verify that the performance of the test equipment matches and reasonably exceeds the expected maximum performance of the system under test. Assert that the test bed characteristics are stable during the whole test session. A number of factors might influence stability specifically for virtualized test beds, for example additional work loads in a virtualized system, load balancing and movement of virtual machines during the test, or simple issues such as additional heat created by high workloads leading to an emergency CPU performance reduction. Test bed reference pre-tests help to ensure that the desired traffic generator aspects such as maximum throughput and the network performance metrics such as maximum latency and maximum packet loss are met. Once the desired maximum performance goals for the system under test have been identified, a safety margin of 10 % SHOULD be added for throughput and subtracted for maximum latency and maximum packet loss. Test bed preparation can be performed either by configuring the DUT in the most trivial setup (fast forwarding) or without presence of DUT.

This section describes how the final report should be formatted and presented. The final test report may have two major sections; Introduction and result sections. The following attributes should be present in the introduction section of the test report. The name of the NetSecOPEN traffic mix must be prominent. The time and date of the execution of the test must be prominent. Summary of testbed software and Hardware details DUT Hardware/Virtual Configuration This section should clearly identify the make and model of the DUT iThe port interfaces, including speed and link information must be documented. If the DUT is a virtual VNF, interface acceleration such as DPDK and SR-IOV must be documented as well as cores used, RAM used, and the pinning / resource sharing configuration. The Hypervisor and version must be documented. Any additional hardware relevant to the DUT such as controllers must be documented DUT Software The operating system name must be documented The version must be documented The specific configuration must be documented DUT Enabled Features Specific features, such as logging, NGFW, DPI must be documented iAttributes of those featured must be documented Any additional relevant information about features must be documented Test equipment hardware and software Test equipment vendor name Hardware details including model number, interface type Test equipment firmware and test application software version Results Summary / Executive Summary Results should resemble a pyramid in how it is reported, with the introduction section documenting the summary of results in a prominent, easy to read block. In the result section of the test report, the following attributes should be present for each test scenario. KPIs must be documented separately for each test scenario. The format of the KPI metrics should be presented as described in section 6.1. The next level of detains should be graphs showing each of these metrics over the duration (sustain phase) of the test. This allows the user to see the measured performance stability changes over time.

This section lists KPIs for overall benchmarking tests scenarios. All KPIs MUST be measured in whole period of sustain phase as described insection 4.3.4. All KPIs MUST be measured from test equipment statistics only. TCP Concurrent Connection CapacityThis key performance indicator will measure the average concurrent open TCP connections in the sustaining period. TCP Connection Setup RateThis key performance indicator will measure the average established TCP connections per second in the sustaining period. For Session setup rate benchmarking test scenario, the KPI will measure average established and terminated TCP connections per second simultaneously. Application Transaction RateThis key performance indicator will measure the average successful transactions per seconds in the sustaining period. TLS Handshake RateThis key performance indicator will measure the average TLS 1.2 or higher session formation rate within the sustaining period. URL Response time / Time to Last Byte (TTLB)This key performance indicator will measure the minimum, average and maximum per URL response time in the sustaining period as well as the average variance in the same period. Application Transaction TimeThis key performance indicator will measure the minimum, average and maximum the amount of time to receive all objects from the server. Time to First Byte (TTFB)This key performance indicator will measure minimum, average and maximum the time to first byte. TTFB is the elapsed time between sending the SYN packet from the client and receiving the first byte of application date from the DUT/SUT. TTFB SHOULD be expressed in millisecond. TCP Connect TimeThis key performance indicator will measure minimum, average and maximum TCP connect time. It is elapsed between the time the client sends a SYN packet and the time it receives the SYN/ACK. TCP connect time SHOULD be expressed in millisecond.

To determine the average throughput performance of the DUT/SUT when using application traffic mix defined insection 7.1.3.3.

Test bed setup MUST be configured as defined in section 4. Any test scenario specific test bed configuration changes must be documented.

In this section, test scenario specific parameters SHOULD be defined.

Test equipment configuration parameters MUST conform to the requirements defined in section 4.3. Following parameters MUST be noted for this test scenario: Client IP address range Server IP address range Traffic distribution ratio between IPv4 and IPv6 Traffic load objective or specification type (e.g Throughput, SimUsers and etc.) Target throughput: It can be defined based on requirements. Otherwise it represents aggregated line rate of interface(s) used in the DUT/SUT Initial throughput: Initial throughput can be up to 10% of the “Target throughput”

DUT/SUT parameters MUST conform to the requirements defined in section 4.2. Any configuration changes for this specific test scenario MUST be documented.

Test scenario MUST be run with a single application traffic mix profile. The name of the NetSecOpen traffic mix MUST be documented.

The following test Criteria is defined as test results acceptance criteria Number of failed Application transaction MUST be 0.01%. Number of Terminated TCP connection due to unexpected TCP RST sent by DUT/SUT MUST be less than 0.01% Maximum deviation (max. dev) of application transaction time / TTLB (Time To Last Byte) MUST be less than X (e.g. 2, TBD)The following equation MUST be used to calculate the deviation of application transaction time or TTLB.max. dev = max((avg_latency – min_latency),(max_latency – avg_latency)) / (Initial latency)Where, the initial latency is calculated using the following equation. For this calculation, the latency values (min’, avg’ and max’) MUST be measured during test procedure step 1 as defined in section 7.1.4.1. The variable latency represents application transaction time or TTLB. Initial latency:= min((avg’ latency – min’ latency) | (max’ latency – avg’ latency)) Maximum value of TCP connect time must be less than (TBD) ms. (beta tests required to determine the value). The definition for TCP connect time can be found in section 6.2. Maximum value of Time to First Byte must be less than 2* TCP connect time. Test Acceptance criteria for this test scenario MUST be monitored during the sustain phase of the traffic load profile only.

Following KPI metrics MUST be reported for this test scenario. Mandatory KPIs: average Throughput, maximum Concurrent TCP connection, TTLB/application transaction time (minimum, average and maximum) and average application transaction rate Optional KPIs: average TCP connection setup rate, average TLS handshake rate, TCP connect time and TTFB

The test procedure is designed to measure the throughput performance of the DUT/SUT at the sustaining period of traffic load profile. The test procedure consists of three major steps.

Verify the link status of the all connected physical interfaces. All interfaces are expected to be “UP” status. Configure traffic load profile of the test equipment to generate test traffic at “initial throughput" rate as described in the parameters section. The DUT/SUT SHOULD reach the "initial throughput" during the sustain phase. Measure all KPI as defined in section 7.1.3.5. The measured KPIs during the sustain phase MUST meet acceptance criteria “a” and “b” defined in section 7.1.3.4. If the KPI metrics do not meet the acceptance criteria, the test procedure MUST NOT be continued to step 2.

Configure test equipment to generate traffic at “Target throughput” rate defined in the parameter table. The test equipment SHOULD follow the traffic load profile definition as described in section 4.3.4. The test equipment SHOULD start to measure and record all specified KPIs. The frequency of KPI metrics measurement MUST be less than 5 seconds. Continue the test until all traffic profile phases are completed. The DUT/SUT is expected to reach the desired target throughput during the sustain phase. In addition, the measured KPIs must meet all acceptance criteria. Follow the step 3, if the KPI metrics do not meet the acceptance criteria.

Use binary search algorithm to configure the desired traffic load profile for each test iteration. Determine the maximum and average achievable throughput within the acceptance criteria.

TBD Resolution:=0.01* Target throughput and Backoff:= 50%

This document makes no request of IANA. Note to RFC Editor: this section may be removed on publication as an RFC.

tbd