Stress testing a firewall

Hi,

If you wanted to stress test a firewall, what would be the parameters? I can think of four types of traffic to test the firewall:

1. Short-lived TCP Connections like HTTP. Often, such connections are high in number (per sec creation) but have low data transfer.
2. Persistent TCP Connections like FTP.
3. Short-lived UDP Connections like DNS that are high in number (created per sec)
4. Persistent UDP connections like audio/video streaming.

I think that a simulation of the above four simultaneously in a controlled manner should create a good test-bed for firewall stress testing as it would test:

1. Whats the maximum througput the firewall can withstand.
2. Whats the rate of new connections (TCP/UDP) that the firewall can handle.
3. Whats the number of simultaneous TCP/UDP connections that the firewall can handle.

Any comments?

Thanks,

Siddhartha