Xena Safire Firewall Tester Overview

NextGen Enterprise firewalls provide network security by segmenting corporate LANs. Unfortunaltey advanced security functions (e.g. antivirus, app-control, IPS and SSL decryption) can have a performance penalty. Using these features can quickly impair network performance by as much as 90% negatively impacting users and business performance.

Safire helps to solve this problem with an easy to use, fast and afforadable test solution.

Connect the Safire firewall tester to your firewall, quickly setup a profile that matches your network, and select what features you would like to measure. Start the test and within just a few minutes the Safire tester will compile a detailed report on which features in use are degrading performance, with easy to read graphics that clearly point out the firewall’s breaking points and a lot of insightful data.

Featured Test Scenarios

Safire Firewall Tester is a simple and cost-efficient tool for:

1. Comparing multiple firewalls prior to purchasing
2. Validating performance before installation
3. Confriming performance after changes such as software updates, patches
4. Verifying performance after any Network changes
5. Measuring impact and performance of new software apps

Safire Firewall Tester System Diagram

Safire Firewall Test Software

SafireManager – Safire Web UI

Safire is managed by an easy-to-use web-based user interface, SafireManager, which is so intuitive that new user training is almost never required. Users are walked through a few simple steps of connecting to the firewall and setting up all the variables relevant to the test, such as, network scenarios, traffic mixes, how many users to be emulated and which features to test. The basic test configuration process usually takes only a few minutes. Then run the test and review the report results.

The main reason why Safire tester is so easy is it includes a pre-defined library of application traffic and network protocols to ensure real world network traffic profiles.

Every enterprise has a unique network traffic profile. Performance testing next generation enterprise firewalls, where application awareness is widely used for policing enterprise network traffic, requires realistic traffic that match the unique traffic profile of that network.

Safire Firewall tester makes it easy to create unique network traffic with its library of applications and protocols (in pcap format) to maximize the accuracy of the test.

The report in PDF format, includes a cover summary with the main findings, plus in-depth graphical data so you can quickly find performance issues.

Key Features

Check Goodput and Throughput

Safire makes it easy to document goodput, which is the application-level throughput (i.e. the number of useful information bits delivered by the network to a specific destination per unit of time). It also measures Layer 1 throughput with different concurrent sessions, packet sizes, traffic mixes, and traffic characteristics in easy-to-understand graphs.

Security Perimeter and Internal Segmentation

You can test with asymmetric or symmetric traffic patterns and different mixes on various firewall deployment topologies: security perimeter firewalls protect enterprise against inbound traffic, while internal segmentation firewalls protect internal LAN network segments, where the demand for performance is much higher than those at the edge.

SSL Deep Inspection Performance Test

Run tests with the latest standardized TLS encryption to identify the impact of enabling SSL deep inspection policy on your firewalls.

Smart Test Result Analysis

Quickly compare different test results for a smart analysis on how different firewalls perform with the same features enabled, or how the same firewall performs when different features and policies are enabled.

Easy-to-understand PDF reports
Safire produces attractive PDF reports that highlight important performance indicators for efficient decision-making.

Safire Hardware

SafireCompact Chassis