Palo Alto Delivers Fast Firewall

The new PA-5060 considered a capable performer.

Palo Alto's new firewall delivered performance 10 times faster than when ComputerWorld tested the product line in 2008. According to the review, forwarding rate tests clearly show that the PA-5060, which can be equipped with up to four 10-Gbit/s interfaces, runs at least 10 times faster than earlier Palo Alto models.

"Of course, there is always a tradeoff between security and performance. In the case of Palo Alto's PA-5060, it all depends on what features you turn on and off.

"Palo Alto has shaken up the firewall market with its "application aware" feature, and we found that this next-generation capability carries no performance penalty. The PA-5060 does application-layer inspection by default.

"On the other hand - and this is a pretty big caveat - UTM rates were nowhere near the device's stated 20Gbps limit. Performance was far lower with any UTM feature enabled than when the PA-5060 operated in firewall-only mode."

Read the Full Story at Computer World