Abstract

WatchGuard Technologies, Inc. commissioned The Tolly Group to evaluate its Firebox III Model 1000, an enterprise-class firewall and IPSec gateway designed to serve mid-size business or branch offices. This purpose-built, Fast Ethernet security device was benchmarked by The Tolly Group, which compared the Firebox 1000 performance to a Nokia Corp. IP330 and a SonicWALL PRO-VX. The Tolly Group conducted zero-loss throughput tests in both IPSec tunnel and firewall configurations with a range of packet sizes.

WatchGuard’s Firebox III Model 1000 is positioned as an enterprise-class firewall and IPSec gateway for mid-size businesses and branch offices that need strong security without sacrificing Fast Ethernet performance. In Tolly Group testing, the Firebox 1000 was compared directly with the Nokia IP330 and SonicWALL PRO-VX in both IPSec tunnel and single-rule firewall configurations, using zero-loss UDP throughput as the primary metric.  

In IPSec testing, all devices were configured with 3DES encryption and SHA-1 authentication. The Firebox 1000 delivered the highest throughput of the three products at every packet size tested. With 1,400-byte packets, it achieved 72Mbit/s of unidirectional zero-loss throughput, compared with 52Mbit/s for the SonicWALL PRO-VX and just 6Mbit/s for the Nokia IP330. The report notes that with 1,518-byte packets, the SonicWALL device appeared unable to fragment oversized encrypted frames after encapsulation and therefore dropped large packets. Tolly presents the Firebox as the strongest IPSec performer in the group across the full tested packet range from 64 to 1,518 bytes.  

Firewall-mode results were also strong. Configured as a single-rule, allow-all firewall with NAT enabled, the Firebox 1000 reached wire-speed 100Mbit/s throughput in tests of 512-, 1,024-, 1,400-, and 1,518-byte packets. Nokia’s IP330 reached 99Mbit/s in those larger-packet tests, while the SonicWALL PRO-VX achieved 84Mbit/s at 512-byte packets and 100Mbit/s at 1,024 bytes and above. At smaller packet sizes, the Firebox also outperformed SonicWALL.  

The report characterizes the Firebox 1000 as a hardware-based security appliance that preserves throughput close to that of an unsecured Fast Ethernet network while still providing encryption, decryption, authentication, and firewall inspection. Overall, the evaluation positions it as a strong option for enterprise and branch deployments that require both VPN security and predictable LAN/WAN performance under real packet-processing loads.