Performance and Latency Considerations

Harmony Connect assigns custom cloud An administrator approved Harmony Connect cloud location that processes the internet and corporate traffic. resources for each user. Every cloud location has two zones with dedicated computer resources assigned to your tenant. The minimum bandwidth of each cloud location is 2 Gbps for traffic to exit.

The Point of Presence (PoP Point of Presense (PoP) is the network interface between communicating entities.) bandwidth is distributed between your users and branches. It is distributed across multiple users, so that no user can consume it completely.

Bandwidth and latency available to a user is based on these factors:

• Internet connectivity: User’s internet connection depends on factors like location, ISP, strength of the WiFi signal, CPU load and so on. This leads to packet-loss, jitter, and so on that affects the internet connection performance of the user.

• Route to Harmony Connect: Users automatically connect to the nearest available Harmony Connect service POP. The amount of added latency depends on the routing between the user’s ISP and the service POP, which may impact the throughput available to the user. Harmony Connect offers over 40 global cloud locations to minimize the impact.

• Route from Harmony Connect: The route from the Harmony Connect service PoP to the internet service consumed by the user, depends on the hosting services of the target service and the internet connectivity. An impact on the network performance depends on the traffic route.

• VPN encapsulation: Harmony Connect tunnels all network traffic through a VPN tunnel, from the client to the service POP. This impacts the throughput available to the user, based on the required latency and fragmentation. The tunnel impact on network performance might increase when connected from networks with a high packet loss, jitter or with high latency.

  To minimize these effects, Harmony Connect tunnels traffic over UDP. In case, UDP ports are not routable, then Harmony Connect automatically switches to tunnel over TCP port 443 for a better internet performance impact.

• HTTPS inspection and security controls: Harmony Connect applies HTTPS inspection to traffic to enable deep packet inspection and advanced security controls. This involves TCP termination, intensive decryption and encryption. It may impact network performance. Harmony Connect applies advanced security protections to communications, which includes URL Filtering Check Point Software Blade on a Security Gateway that allows granular control over which web sites can be accessed by a given group of users, computers or networks. Acronym: URLF., Application Control Check Point Software Blade on a Security Gateway that allows granular control over specific web-enabled applications by using deep packet inspection. Acronym: APPI., IPS Check Point Software Blade on a Security Gateway that inspects and analyzes packets and data for numerous types of risks (Intrusion Prevention System)., advanced malware protection, C2 prevention, DLP, DNS security and so on.

Note - Run synthetic network performance tests. For example, time taken to download a binary file and using network performance measurement tools, such as, speedtest.net and iPerf. Results vary depending on the above factors.