what are the performance when SSL decryption is activated

[paloalto_exn]

Does everyone knows what are the performance when the SSL decryption engine works?

There are no information about that into any datasheets, so it must be interesting to know how every box's behavior in that situation.

Any help or tips also based on personal experience will be appreciate.

Regards.

[LeeKlarich]

There is not a simple answer to this question for a few reasons: 

1. SSL decryption performance only applies to SSL traffic - the limiting factor is the SSL encryption/decryption engine so other traffic is not impacted.
2. SSL decryption performance is different for SSL forward proxy vs inbound inspection.
3. Performance will vary based on response sizes...smaller response sizes will have lower performance than bigger response sizes.

Overall, it is important that you work with you local Palo Alto Networks systems engineer to fully understand SSL decryption performance.

Having said that, here are rough performance levels for forward proxy decryption with 64KB response sizes:

PA-4000 Series:  380Mbps

PA-2000 Series:  70Mbps

PA-500:  90Mbps

Inbound SSL inspection is roughly 2X the performance of forward proxy.

Lee