Abstract

Tolly Group Report #202112 (January 2002) confirms that Quarry iQ8000 Service Edge Switch delivers carrier-grade security services at wire speed.

• IPSec VPN throughput. Across 3DES/SHA-1 tunnels the switch sustained 100% of theoretical zero-loss bandwidth at 512- and 1 024-byte packets, 93% at 1 400 bytes and 83% at 64 bytes while QoS was active.

• Firewall performance. In a single-rule allow-all configuration it achieved 100% zero-loss throughput for every packet size above 64 bytes, translating to an aggregate 4 Gbit/s system rate.

• Service stacking impact. Enabling QoS and firewall on top of IPSec preserved the same zero-loss figures except for 64-byte traffic, which remained at 80% of theoretical capacity.

• Latency. Median single-device delay ranged from 313 µs (64 bytes) to 604 µs (1 400 bytes) with IPSec, QoS and firewall all enabled.

• Tunnel setup scale. The platform established 33 IPSec tunnels per second, hitting the limit of the test tool itself.

• Architectural headroom. Design limits include 128,000 subscribers, 128,000 VPN tunnels, 500,000 firewall sessions and 500.000 routing entries, supporting growth without performance loss.

Summary: iQ8000 maintains wire-speed forwarding, sub-millisecond latency and full throughput even when IPSec, QoS and stateful firewalling run concurrently, pairing high security with predictable performance for large service-provider and enterprise edges.

Note: Quarry was acquired by Reef Point Systems around 2005.