ipchains latency

["Chris Brown" <cbrown@seitz.com>]

Hello,

	Our company LAN is divided into two segments, and I have 
just finished implementing firewalling rules for the router in between 
them, to protect the inner network from the outside world.  After 
meticulously designing an installing my ipchains rules, I was 
dismayed by the performance hit they incurred.  Before installing 
the firewalling rules, connection latency between the networks was 
normally below ~50ms.  telnet, ftp, and other logins took less than 
a second to return a login prompt.  Now, after installing the rules, a 
connection across the firewall takes at least 10sec, occasionally 
taking over 30sec.  Once the login is successful, latency isn't too 
bad, but still noticably worse - well over 200-300ms - when in a 
telnet session.  The router is a 386/33 with 16MB of RAM and two 
ISA Ethernet cards.  Is this an underpowered machine for 
firewalling?  I shouldn't think this is the problem...  Are there any 
errors that add to connection latency that I should be looking for in 
the firewalling rules?

Thanks,
	Chris Brown
	cbrown@seitz.com
	Seitz Technical Products Inc.



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