PROJECT REPORT ON THE PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF FIREWALL RULES ON APPLICATION TRAFFIC USING OPNET MODELER

Increased levels of network communication security and efficiency have heightened demand on the best network firewall settings that can support a wide range of traffic relating to application. This paper will provide performance analysis of firewall rules on application traffic on OPNET Modeler. The environment was simulated as a enterprise network with the aim of reviewing the effects of various firewall rule sets on the key performance indicators: throughput, end-to-end delay, response time and packet loss. Simple, moderate and complex rules configurations were evaluated to evaluate their effect on usual application patterns as web navigation, email, database and file transfer. The findings indicate that successively more complicated Firewall rules have a dramatic impact on application performance which might cause drop to higher latency and throughput (when rule processing cost is large). The results of this study indicate the necessity of maintaining security rigor and performance efficiency in business networks. The paper theorizes that a strategic choice of firewall rule constructions can improve the level of security and network performance and the paper provides recommendations on how to prioritize and refine rule set codifications in practical applications