Spirent TestCenter and Avalanche Used for Performance Evaluation of the World’s First 100Gbps Ethernet, Data Center Firewall Appliance; FortiGate®-3810D Delivers as Low as 4 Microseconds Latency with up to 320 Gbps Firewall Throughput
Fortinet, a global leader in high-performance cyber security 
solutions, and Spirent Communications plc. (LSE: SPT), a leading provider of testing solutions for networks, devices and services, today announced the results of performance tests conducted on the FortiGate®-3810D, the latest Fortinet firewall appliance designed for large enterprises, Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and data center environments.
Consumption of applications and content has dramatically increased the bandwidth demands traversing organizations’ network infrastructure. Networks are becoming rapidly oversaturated as the volume of data center traffic is seeing a 10X jump from the industry standard 10 Gbps Ethernet (GbE). This trend calls for appliances with core network bandwidth capabilities approaching 100 GbE and beyond. Fortinet’s FortiGate-3810D was engineered with 10X performance in mind, the fastest in the industry.
Spirent’s test results validate the high performance and scalability delivered by the FortiGate-3810D. No other 3U appliance form factor firewall on the market can match those results today.
Testing with Spirent solutions showed that the FortiGate-3810D – which comes standard with six 100-Gigabit Ethernet ports, all in one compact 3U appliance form factor – delivers a steady 292 Gbps Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) throughput and 317 Gbps User Datagram Protocol (UDP) throughput with zero packet loss at 512 bytes packet size. The appliance also achieves latency as low as 4.23 microseconds (µs) under 100% load, and tests confirmed there is no performance degradation between IPv4 and IPv6 traffic. Other test results unveil that the FortiGate-3810D supports more than 100 Million concurrent sessions and a setup rate of 550,000 new connections per second.
With such results, the FortiGate-3810D proves to address the stringent throughput and connectivity requirements of today’s large enterprises and data center environments. Those requirements are the result of the growing volume of data generated by rich multimedia service offerings, the trend for data center consolidation, the proliferation of smart mobile devices, and industry or government regulations such as “Roam like at Home” in Europe.
The UDP traffic throughput test was performed with Spirent TestCenter™, which was used as a UDP traffic injector through a total of four 100 Gb Ethernet (GbE) ports. The test was conducted with a variety of packet mix, and showed performance of 231 Million packets per second. The latency introduced by the FortiGate-3810D was minimal at 4.23 µs for 64 bytes packets and with zero packet loss.
The TCP traffic throughput test was performed with the Spirent Avalanche, used as an Application Traffic generator through a total of six 100 GbE ports. It showed application data throughput of 292 Gbps, which is approximatively equivalent to 8 x 40 Gbps of line-rate L2 Ethernet. As part of the full performance test, Spirent’s Avalanche also tested max setup TCP connections rate at 550,000 new connections per second, and the support for a total of 100 Million open connections.
“Spirent’s portfolio of security and performance solutions have become the standard for testing high-end security products in complex networks,” said John Weinschenk, general manager, Applications & Security business unit at Spirent Communications. “Large enterprises, service providers and data center environments must protect their most critical assets while, at the same time, keeping up with the increased bandwidth requirements of their network. The test of FortiGate-3810D validates the robustness, performance, and stability Fortinet’s customers can expect from this high-end network security system.”
“With the availability of the FortiGate-3810D, Fortinet is enabling organizations to deploy core firewalling in high speed, high data volume environments, without compromising overall performance and security.” said Michael Xie, founder, president and CTO of Fortinet. “This is not just a claim. By leveraging Spirent’s test methodology and services, we are able to objectively demonstrate the outstanding performance and quality of the FortiGate-3810D, which delivers an unmatched mix of throughput, flexibility and security for its price class.”
The Spirent test results highlight the best-in-class firewall price-performance of the FortiGate-3810D. This 100-GbE network security appliance is the only 100-GbE port in its class and includes the latest FortiASIC™ network processors (NP6) and content processors (CP8), which accelerate next generation firewall and VPN functions, eliminating traffic bottlenecks in such high speed environments.
Fortinet’s FortiGate-3810D appliance is the latest to join the FortiGate-3000 series product family. Integrating high-performance firewall capabilities with advanced threat protection in a single appliance to help protect CSPs and large enterprises’ vital assets in a low latency, multi-Gigabit Ethernet environment.
Like other security appliances from Fortinet, the FortiGate-3810D is equipped with the FortiOS 5.2 security operating system to effectively neutralize a wide range of security threats facing networks today.
Spirent TestCenter provides measurement solutions for next generation networks – from traditional performance testing to the rigorous analysis of Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Mobile Backhaul, and High Speed Ethernet. The Spirent Avalanche solution provides multi-10 Gbps capacity, security and performance testing for network infrastructures, Web application infrastructures and Triple Play services ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) for your customers.
