How much latency does a firewall introduce?

[fastman]

This would be for home use, I'm thinking it would only come into "play" or be seen if used for a Game Server? I know small CPU's can be used, i.e. 486, but would latency be reduced if using a faster CPU? How much of a CPU?

 

[StuckMojo]

this is not from actually measuring or anything, but i think its really negligable, like 1ms.

unless you were talking line speed (10Mb on a 10Mb card) then you would start to suffer. but since your home connection wont even come close i really don't think you'll notice (provided you use good nics, not 10 yr old ISA 10Mb cards)

 

[fastman]

I thought of that, both Firewall and Server have dual port NIC's.

 

[n0cmonkey]

The latency is negligable. Dont worry about it too much. And if you are running a game server you can put it in a dmz without being behind the firewall and that would take care of that problem. But only if you spend time hardening the system

 

[DaHitman]

I ran a firewall on a 486/100 with 16MB of ram and I did many speed tests and I got no worse speeds than what I get now with my DUAL 464 PIII Server/Firewall. Packet switching is just not that stressfull on a system, and even the ISA BUS is more than enough bandwith for a full 10 Base T connection.