|  |  | 
|  | More number for the questions about SSL overheads.... | 
|  |  | 
|  | The following numbers were generated on a pentium pro 200, running linux. | 
|  | They give an indication of the SSL protocol and encryption overheads. | 
|  |  | 
|  | The program that generated them is an unreleased version of ssl/ssltest.c | 
|  | which is the SSLeay ssl protocol testing program.  It is a single process that | 
|  | talks both sides of the SSL protocol via a non-blocking memory buffer | 
|  | interface. | 
|  |  | 
|  | How do I read this?  The protocol and cipher are reasonable obvious. | 
|  | The next number is the number of connections being made.  The next is the | 
|  | number of bytes exchanged bewteen the client and server side of the protocol. | 
|  | This is the number of bytes that the client sends to the server, and then | 
|  | the server sends back.  Because this is all happening in one process, | 
|  | the data is being encrypted, decrypted, encrypted and then decrypted again. | 
|  | It is a round trip of that many bytes.  Because the one process performs | 
|  | both the client and server sides of the protocol and it sends this many bytes | 
|  | each direction, multiply this number by 4 to generate the number | 
|  | of bytes encrypted/decrypted/MACed.  The first time value is how many seconds | 
|  | elapsed doing a full SSL handshake, the second is the cost of one | 
|  | full handshake and the rest being session-id reuse. | 
|  |  | 
|  | SSLv2 RC4-MD5      1000 x      1   12.83s   0.70s | 
|  | SSLv3 NULL-MD5     1000 x      1   14.35s   1.47s | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-MD5      1000 x      1   14.46s   1.56s | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-MD5      1000 x      1   51.93s   1.62s 1024bit RSA | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-SHA      1000 x      1   14.61s   1.83s | 
|  | SSLv3 DES-CBC-SHA  1000 x      1   14.70s   1.89s | 
|  | SSLv3 DES-CBC3-SHA 1000 x      1   15.16s   2.16s | 
|  |  | 
|  | SSLv2 RC4-MD5      1000 x   1024   13.72s   1.27s | 
|  | SSLv3 NULL-MD5     1000 x   1024   14.79s   1.92s | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-MD5      1000 x   1024   52.58s   2.29s 1024bit RSA | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-SHA      1000 x   1024   15.39s   2.67s | 
|  | SSLv3 DES-CBC-SHA  1000 x   1024   16.45s   3.55s | 
|  | SSLv3 DES-CBC3-SHA 1000 x   1024   18.21s   5.38s | 
|  |  | 
|  | SSLv2 RC4-MD5      1000 x  10240   18.97s   6.52s | 
|  | SSLv3 NULL-MD5     1000 x  10240   17.79s   5.11s | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-MD5      1000 x  10240   20.25s   7.90s | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-MD5      1000 x  10240   58.26s   8.08s 1024bit RSA | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-SHA      1000 x  10240   22.96s  11.44s | 
|  | SSLv3 DES-CBC-SHA  1000 x  10240   30.65s  18.41s | 
|  | SSLv3 DES-CBC3-SHA 1000 x  10240   47.04s  34.53s | 
|  |  | 
|  | SSLv2 RC4-MD5      1000 x 102400   70.22s  57.74s | 
|  | SSLv3 NULL-MD5     1000 x 102400   43.73s  31.03s | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-MD5      1000 x 102400   71.32s  58.83s | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-MD5      1000 x 102400  109.66s  59.20s 1024bit RSA | 
|  | SSLv3 RC4-SHA      1000 x 102400   95.88s  82.21s | 
|  | SSLv3 DES-CBC-SHA  1000 x 102400  173.22s 160.55s | 
|  | SSLv3 DES-CBC3-SHA 1000 x 102400  336.61s 323.82s | 
|  |  | 
|  | What does this all mean?  Well for a server, with no session-id reuse, with | 
|  | a transfer size of 10240 bytes, using RC4-MD5 and a 512bit server key, | 
|  | a pentium pro 200 running linux can handle the SSLv3 protocol overheads of | 
|  | about 49 connections a second.  Reality will be quite different :-). | 
|  |  | 
|  | Remeber the first number is 1000 full ssl handshakes, the second is | 
|  | 1 full and 999 with session-id reuse.  The RSA overheads for each exchange | 
|  | would be one public and one private operation, but the protocol/MAC/cipher | 
|  | cost would be quite similar in both the client and server. | 
|  |  | 
|  | eric (adding numbers to speculation) | 
|  |  | 
|  | --- Appendix --- | 
|  | - The time measured is user time but these number a very rough. | 
|  | - Remember this is the cost of both client and server sides of the protocol. | 
|  | - The TCP/kernal overhead of connection establishment is normally the | 
|  | killer in SSL.  Often delays in the TCP protocol will make session-id | 
|  | reuse look slower that new sessions, but this would not be the case on | 
|  | a loaded server. | 
|  | - The TCP round trip latencies, while slowing indervidual connections, | 
|  | would have minimal impact on throughput. | 
|  | - Instead of sending one 102400 byte buffer, one 8k buffer is sent until | 
|  | - the required number of bytes are processed. | 
|  | - The SSLv3 connections were actually SSLv2 compatable SSLv3 headers. | 
|  | - A 512bit server key was being used except where noted. | 
|  | - No server key verification was being performed on the client side of the | 
|  | protocol.  This would slow things down very little. | 
|  | - The library being used is SSLeay 0.8.x. | 
|  | - The normal mesauring system was commands of the form | 
|  | time ./ssltest -num 1000 -bytes 102400 -cipher DES-CBC-SHA -reuse | 
|  | This modified version of ssltest should be in the next public release of | 
|  | SSLeay. | 
|  |  | 
|  | The general cipher performace number for this platform are | 
|  |  | 
|  | SSLeay 0.8.2a 04-Sep-1997 | 
|  | built on Fri Sep  5 17:37:05 EST 1997 | 
|  | options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) idea(int) blowfish(ptr2) | 
|  | C flags:gcc -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -m486 -Wall -Wuninitialized | 
|  | The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. | 
|  | type              8 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes | 
|  | md2               131.02k      368.41k      500.57k      549.21k      566.09k | 
|  | mdc2              535.60k      589.10k      595.88k      595.97k      594.54k | 
|  | md5              1801.53k     9674.77k    17484.03k    21849.43k    23592.96k | 
|  | sha              1261.63k     5533.25k     9285.63k    11187.88k    11913.90k | 
|  | sha1             1103.13k     4782.53k     7933.78k     9472.34k    10070.70k | 
|  | rc4             10722.53k    14443.93k    15215.79k    15299.24k    15219.59k | 
|  | des cbc          3286.57k     3827.73k     3913.39k     3931.82k     3926.70k | 
|  | des ede3         1443.50k     1549.08k     1561.17k     1566.38k     1564.67k | 
|  | idea cbc         2203.64k     2508.16k     2538.33k     2543.62k     2547.71k | 
|  | rc2 cbc          1430.94k     1511.59k     1524.82k     1527.13k     1523.33k | 
|  | blowfish cbc     4716.07k     5965.82k     6190.17k     6243.67k     6234.11k | 
|  | sign    verify | 
|  | rsa  512 bits   0.0100s   0.0011s | 
|  | rsa 1024 bits   0.0451s   0.0012s | 
|  | rsa 2048 bits   0.2605s   0.0086s | 
|  | rsa 4096 bits   1.6883s   0.0302s | 
|  |  |