It’s no coincidence that Palo Alto Networks is considered to be a leader and pioneer when it comes to Next Generation Firewall appliances and Gartner seems to agree with this statement based on their Magic Quadrant report in the Next Generation Firewall Segment:
Figure 1. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls
Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls unique way of processing a packet using the Single Pass Parallel Processing [SP3] engine makes them a clear leader.
Note: Read all our technical articles covering Palo Alto Firewalls by visiting our Palo Alto Firewall Section.
Basically, the SP3 engine utilizes the same stream-based signature format to process the protection features like Anti-Virus, Spyware, Vulnerability Protection and Data Filtering. By doing so the firewall saves valuable processing power, unlike other Unified Threat Management [UTM] appliances which serially process each security feature offered, this often introduces latency to the network traffic.
The advanced security features like App-ID, User-ID, Content-ID along with Security profiles, comprising feature like Antivirus, Anti-Spyware, Vulnerability protection, URL Filtering, DoS Protection and Data Filtering makes Palo Alto the leader. Most importantly its malware analysis solution WildFire offers advanced protection from unknown threats.
Palo Alto Networks offers its firewalls as Hardware Platforms and Virtual Platforms. Its Hardware Platforms comes in different flavors.
Figure 2. The Palo Alto Firewall family
PA-200 and PA-500 Series Firewalls are meant for Small Businesses and come with very limited throughput and do not support Virtual Systems. Virtual Systems, also known as VSYS, is used to create virtual firewall instances in a single-pair of Palo Alto Firewalls, in other words, Virtual Systems can be compared to contexts in Cisco ASA Firewalls or vdom in Fortinet firewalls. The PA-200, PA-500 Series Firewalls offer a very limited number of security policies like security rules, NAT rules, policy based forwarding rules and a few more.
Datasheets on Palo Alto Firewall appliances and Virtual Servers are available at our Palo Alto Datasheets and Guides download area
The table below provides a clear comparison of features and technical specifications of both PA-500 and PA-200 firewall models:
Features
PA-200
Performance
App-ID firewall throughput
250 Mbps
100 Mbps
Threat prevention throughput
100 Mbps
50 Mbps
IPSec VPN throughput
50 Mbps
50 Mbps
Connections per second
7,500
1,000
Sessions
Max sessions [IPv4 or IPv6]
64,000
64,000
Policies
Security rules
1,000
250
Security rule schedules
256
256
NAT rules
160
160
Decryption rules
100
100
App override rules
100
100
QoS rules
100
100
Policy based forwarding rules
100
100
Captive portal rules
100
10
DoS protection rules
100
100
Table 1. Technical Specifications of PA-500 & PA-200 Firewall Appliances
The PA-2000 & PA-4000 Series Firewalls are older End-of-Sales platforms, but can certainly be used for any type of lab environment and training.
The PA-3000 series Palo Alto Firewalls like the PA-3020, PA-3050 & PA-3060 are good for Mid-Size Enterprise Networks and they offer a throughput [App-ID] between 2Gbps and 4Gbps based the on model selected. The PA-3060 is the only firewall that comes with 2 x 10Gbps SFP+ Interfaces, while the rest of the PA-3000 Series offer only 1Gig Interfaces, which are both copper and fiber.
Table 2 below compares features and technical specifications between the PA-3020, PA-3050 & PA-3060 firewall models:
Features
PA-3060
PA-3050
PA-3020
Performance
App-ID firewall throughput
4 Gbps
4 Gbps
2 Gbps
Threat prevention throughput
2 Gbps
2 Gbps
1 Gbps
IPSec VPN throughput
500 Mbps
500 Mbps
500 Mbps
Connections per second
50,000
50,000
50,000
Policies
Security rules
5,000
5,000
2,500
Security rule schedules
256
256
256
NAT rules
5,000
5,000
3,000
Decryption rules
500
500
250
App override rules
500
500
250
QoS rules
1,000
1,000
1,000
Policy based forwarding rules
500
500
500
Captive portal rules
1,000
1,000
1,000
DoS protection rules
1,000
1,000
1,000
Interfaces
Mgmt - out-of-band
10/100/1000, RJ45 console
10/100/1000, RJ45 console
10/100/1000, RJ45 console
Mgmt - 10/100/1000 high availability
2
2
2
Mgmt - 40Gbps high availability
NA
NA
NA
Traffic - 10/100/1000
8
12
12
Traffic - 1Gbps SFP
8
8
8
Traffic - 10Gbps SFP+
2
NA
NA
Table 2. Comparing the PA-3020, PA-3050 & PA-3060 firewall models
The PA-5000 Series firewalls such as the PA-5020, PA-5050 & PA-5060 are very powerful and best suited for medium to large Enterprise Networks. This series of firewalls offers an impressive throughput [App-ID] between 5Gbps and 20Gbps. These are the most stable firewalls the industry has seen and it’s often recommended to have a PA-5060 firewall as a Data Centre Firewall for mid to large size data centres.
Features
PA-5060
PA-5050
PA-5020
Performance
App-ID firewall throughput
20 Gbps
10 Gbps
5 Gbps
Threat prevention throughput
10 Gbps
5 Gbps
2 Gbps
IPSec VPN throughput
4 Gbps
4 Gbps
2 Gbps
Connections per second
120,000
120,000
120,000
Interfaces
Mgmt - out-of-band
10/100/1000, RJ45 console
10/100/1000, RJ45 console
10/100/1000, RJ45 console
Mgmt - 10/100/1000 high availability
2
2
2
Mgmt - 40Gbps high availability
NA
NA
NA
Traffic - 10/100/1000
12
12
12
Traffic - 1Gbps SFP
8
8
8
Traffic - 10Gbps SFP+
4
4
NA
Table 3. Comparing the PA-5020, PA-5050 & PA-5060 firewall models
The PA-7000 Series firewalls are the chassis based firewalls available in PA-7050 & PA-7080 models, these firewalls offer a huge throughput [App-ID] between 120Gbps and 200Gbps, and are targeted for Service Provider Networks.
Features
PA-7080
PA-7050
Performance
App-ID firewall throughput
200 Gbps
120 Gbps
Threat prevention throughput
100 Gbps
60 Gbps
IPSec VPN throughput
80 Gbps
48 Gbps
Connections per second
1,200,000
720,000
Interfaces
Mgmt - out-of-band
10/100/1000, RJ45 console
10/100/1000, RJ45 console
Mgmt - 10/100/1000 high availability
2
2
Mgmt - 40Gbps high availability
2
2
Traffic - 10/100/1000
120
72
Traffic - 1Gbps SFP
80
48
Traffic - 10Gbps SFP+
120
72
Routing
IPv4 forwarding table size*
32,000
32,000
IPv6 forwarding table size*
32,000
32,000
Max route maps per virtual router
50
50
Max routing peers [protocol dependent]
500
500
Static entries - DNS proxy
1,024
1,024
L2 Forwarding
ARP table size per device
32,000
32,000
IPv6 neighbor table size
32,000
32,000
MAC table size per device
32,000
32,000
Max ARP entries per broadcast domain
32,000
32,000
Max MAC entries per broadcast domain
32,000
32,000
Table 4. Technical specifications of the PA-7000 series firewalls targeting Service Provider Networks
Palo Alto Networks also offers Virtual Firewalls that are ideal for protecting virtual data centres and "East-West" traffic. With the advent of Software Defined Networking and the growing popularity of VMWare NSX, Palo Alto is offering a dedicated Virtualized Firewall VM-1000-HV. The Palo Alto VM-1000-HV was specifically developed to support VMWare NSX setups along with VMWare ESXI, Citrix Netscaler SDX , KVM and Amazon Web Services [AWS] platforms.
Palo Alto also offers the VM-300, VM-200 and VM-100 Virtualized platforms which offer a throughput [App-ID] of 1Gbps.
Feature
VM-1000-HV
VM-300
VM-200 / VM-100
Performance
App-ID firewall throughput
1 Gbps
1 Gbps
1 Gbps
Threat prevention throughput
600 Mbps
600 Mbps
600 Mbps
IPSec VPN throughput
250 Mbps
250 Mbps
250 Mbps
Connections per second
8,000
8,000
8,000
Sessions
Max sessions [IPv4 or IPv6]
250,000
250,000
100,000 / 50,000
Table 5. The VM-300, VM-200 and VM-100 virtual Palo Alto firewall appliances
Palo Alto Firewalls have been quickly adopted by thousands of organizations around the globe thanks to their advanced security features, incredible performance and ability to provide complete unified threat management security services without degrading network speed. Visit our Palo Alto Firewall section for more technical and how-to articles.
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Tags: network security Firewalls VPN palo alto PA-3060 PA-7080 PA-7050 PA-200 PA-500 App-ID VM-1000-HV PA-5060 PA-5050 PA-5020 PA-3050 PA-3020 Anti-Spyware DoS Protection