Studying the Performance of a Firewall in Network Courses

This paper presents a simple simulation model of a firewall to derive several performance metrics and briefly argues on the importance and value of modeling and simulation in courses that study various aspects of perimeter defense in network security. The simulation model mentioned previously is part of an effort by faculty of our department to develop a multi-disciplinary repository of computational models that includes object-oriented discrete-event simulation models. One of the goals of this repository is to build resources that help educate students of computer science, software engineering, and information technology, in modeling and information security. This and other network simulation models are implemented in Java with the PsimJ simulation package. Other models have been implemented in C++ using the Psim3 package. The source code for the models, the downloadable simulation package, and more detailed description can be found on the Psim Web page.