International VPN's over the Internet

[a.butterworth]

Has anyone got any decent case-studies or information about what performance levels can be expected with International VPN's; specifically between the UK (UUNet 256K pipe) to Cairo (no current ISP but similar access speed-256k). I have a customer who is after SLA's, guarantees etc.

I have no issues with actually getting this working (gonna use PIX 515's) but I can't seem to find any good information to back the case up.

Any help greatly appreciated......

[s-doyle]

I don't think there is one single number that can be applied to any platform. There are multiple combinations of transform sets and packet sizes. If you use small packets, the performance numbers worsen and likewise large packets increase the performance. Also, as I'm sure you know, with IPSec it is possible to do just authentication, just encryption or both encryption and authentication on a data flow. The more you do, the worse the performance. Guarantees & SLA's... only with top notch QoS in my opinion. International SP's might be a problem here. If somebody reading this can share performance numbers, that would be helpful. Otherwise, I think you might try contacting your Cisco Systems Engineer to see if they have some real customers willing to share their performance numbers with you.

[a.butterworth]

Thanks for the reply. I tried contacting our Cisco SE before I sent this originally, he was no use, he just sent me some url's that blew the Cisco trumpet but had no actual 'real' information. The customer has 'bitten the bullet' and gone for the solution anyway so we wil see.........