Cisco device traffic / bandwidth requirements

In article , Cen wrote: :Where do i get information on traffic characteristics on cisco devices :(routers, PIX, MLS etc) with regards to the following:

:- connection (TCP/UDP) blocking probability :- bandwidth / load curve :- maximum TCP/UDP connections :- maximum translations

:It's hard to find this info on cisco web site.

The max connections is in the PIX data sheets, but the figures are pretty much meaningless as it depends mostly upon the available memory.

The connection blocking probability on the PIX 6.x software depends upon available memory, and upon whether you have floodguard enabled, and upon the state of the other connections that might be reclaimable -- in the sense that if you are out of resources, ability to connect is going to depend upon ability to reclaim resources.

If you are not out of resources on the PIX then connection blocking probability is going to depend upon what you specified for max_conns and emb_limit in the 'static' command. There is also the possibility that the PIX's IDS will detect an attack and that you have configured 'drop' as the action, do not know at the moment if any of those IDS require any kind of "judgement" or if they can all be determined independantly, on a per-packet basis. For example, "UDP Bomb attack" sounds like it might require seeing a few packets to activate.

Beyond that... if a PIX does not have the resources to handle a packet, then the packet will be dropped. The PIX "fails to closed": each packet must be -explicitly- approved internally in order to pass to the other side. The PIX does not just pass packets through, either: it builds new outgoing packets based upon the information of the incoming packets, so packets cannot "slip through" because (say) a checking algorithm didn't return within a specific time.

I don't think you are going to find information about items such as bandwidth/load curves, not unless you go NDA (Non-disclosure agreement), and even then it is going to depend a lot on what you have configured and what software release. You might be able to find some charts in the results published by The Tolly Group.