Packet flow histograms to improve firewall efficiency

This paper presents a novel mechanism based on the histograms of packet filtering, which are able to effectively monitor firewall performance in real-time and to predict the patterns of packet filtering in terms of rules order and rule-fields order. Furthermore, the mechanism becomes even more significant when firewall is heavily loaded with burst traffic. A comparison of the proposed approach and the other conventional approaches, including static rule order approach and dynamic rule order approach is presented.