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We're putting up a rack of servers in a datacenter which provides us either a 1Gbit pipe or 10Gbit pipe from the router (our choice, our package includes 10Gbit).

But if we have a firewall which supports 1.4Gbit of traffic, with 7x 1Gbit copper ports, is there a way that I can make use of the full 1.4Gbit of maximum bandwidth provided by the firewall given this configuration?

(just in case your tempted to say "buy a better firewall to take advantage of the 10Gbit pipe", we're poor farmers from the countryside who can't quite afford it yet)

ewwhite
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davidparks21
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    1.4Gbit of traffic as reported by the vendor? And exactly how many firewall rules do you think they were doing when they got that number? If price is a driving factor the price difference between a 1Gb and 10Gb port isn't worth the theoretical 400Mb of throughput that it will give you. – 3dinfluence Mar 06 '13 at 05:02
  • Interesting point, I didn't even consider the cost of a 10GbE port and don't know it. Our firewall rule set will be simple as these boxes are mostly backend data processing, but they do tend to transmit large volumes of data. – davidparks21 Mar 06 '13 at 05:09
  • There's no good way to trunk 2 1Gbit lines if I could get that from the datacenter is there? – davidparks21 Mar 06 '13 at 05:12
  • Actually if your firewall only supports 1Gb links then you'll need to use 2 of them in an aggregate with the router. This will give you a 2gb link to the router. May not be overkill but if you're not pushing more than 1Gb of traffic then doing this isn't going to buy you much other than complexity and purhaps some additional cost. – 3dinfluence Mar 06 '13 at 05:13
  • And the datacenter is going to have to be willing to work with you on that. When they are telling you that they will deliver you a 10Gb connection they are probably thinking that means a single fiber drop. – 3dinfluence Mar 06 '13 at 05:15
  • Models and budget would be handy here. – ewwhite May 09 '15 at 06:49

1 Answers1

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Ask your co-location facility or datacenter for their suggestions on how to approach this.

If the bandwidth is really expected to require 10Gbps, you'll need to scale up your firewall and networking infrastructure to meet the need. So if that means a better firewall, it is what it is.

Your budget option would be an open-source firewall built on commodity server hardware.

More detail about what you're doing and the equipment involved would be helpful for context.

ewwhite
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