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    Packet Buffer Protection
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    Packet Buffer Protection

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    Packet Buffer Protection

    Protect the firewall’s packet buffers from single-session DoS attacks that attempt to take down the firewall.
    Packet Buffer Protection defends your firewall and network from single session DoS attacks that can overwhelm the firewall’s packet buffer and cause legitimate traffic to drop. Although you don’t configure Packet Buffer Protection in a Zone Protection profile or in a DoS Protection profile or policy rule, Packet Buffer Protection defends ingress zones. While zone and DoS protection apply to new sessions (connections) and are granular, Packet Buffer Protection applies to existing sessions and is global.
    You Configure Packet Buffer Protection globally to protect the entire firewall and you also enable Packet Buffer Protection on each zone to protect zones:
    • Global Packet Buffer Protection—The firewall monitors sessions from all zones (regardless of whether Packet Buffer Protection is enabled in a zone) and how those sessions utilize the packet buffer. You must configure Packet Buffer Protection globally (DeviceSetupSession Settings) to protect the firewall and to enable it on individual zones. When packet buffer consumption reaches the configured Activate percentage, the firewall used Random Early Drop (RED) to drop packets from the offending sessions (the firewall doesn’t drop complete sessions at the global level).
    • Per-Zone Packet Buffer Protection—Enable Packet Buffer Protection on each zone (NetworkZones) to layer in a second level of protection. When packet buffer consumption crosses the Activate threshold and global protection begins to apply RED to session traffic, that starts the Block Hold Time timer. The Block Hold Time is the amount of time in seconds that the offending session can continue before the firewall blocks the entire session. The offending session remains blocked until the Block Duration time expires.
      You must enable Packet Buffer Protection globally in order for it to be active in zones.
    There are two types of packet buffer protection:

    Packet Buffer Protection Based on Buffer Utilization

    Packet Buffer Protection based on buffer utilization is enabled by default. Take baseline measurements of firewall packet buffer utilization over a period of time until you’re comfortable that you understand typical usage. Take measurements for at least one business week; however, a longer measurement period provides a better baseline. To see packet buffer utilization for a specified period of time, use the operational CLI command: 
    admin1138@thxvm1>show running resource-monitor [day | hour | minute | second | week]
    The CLI command provides a snapshot of buffer utilization for the specified period of time, but is neither automated nor continuous. To automate continuous packet buffer utilization measurements so you can monitor changes in behavior and anomalous events, use a script. Your Palo Alto Networks account team can provide a sample script that you can modify to develop your own script; however, the script is not officially supported and there is no technical support available for script usage or modification.
    If baseline measurements consistently show abnormally high packet buffer utilization, then the firewall’s capacity may be undersized for typical traffic loads. In this case, consider resizing the firewall deployment. Otherwise, you need to tune the Packet Buffer Protection thresholds carefully to prevent impacted buffers from overflowing (and to prevent dropping legitimate traffic). When firewall sizing is correct for the deployment, only an attack should cause a large spike in buffer usage.
    Overrunning the firewall packet buffer negatively impacts the firewall’s packet forwarding capabilities. When the buffers are full, no packets can enter the firewall on any interface, not just the interface that experienced the attack.
    The best practices for setting the thresholds are:
    • Alert and Activate—Start with the default threshold values, monitor packet buffer utilization, and adjust the thresholds as necessary. The Alert threshold defaults to 50%; when packet buffer utilization exceeds the threshold for more than 10 seconds, the firewall creates an alert entry in the System log every minute. The Activate threshold defaults to 80%; when the threshold is reached, the firewall begins to mitigate the most abusive sessions. If the firewall is sized correctly, buffer utilization should be well below 50%.
    • Block Hold Time—When packet buffer utilization triggers the Activate threshold, the Block Hold Time sets the amount of time the offending session can continue before the firewall blocks the session. During the Block Hold Time, the firewall continues to apply RED to the packets of offending sessions. Start with the default Block Hold Time threshold value (60 seconds), monitor packet buffer utilization, and adjust the threshold as necessary. If the packet buffer utilization percentage falls below the Activate threshold before the Block Hold Time expires, the timer resets and doesn’t start until the Activate threshold is crossed again. Increasing the Block Hold Time imposes a greater penalty on offending sessions and reducing it imposes a lesser penalty on offending sessions.
    • Block Duration—When the Block Hold Time expires, the firewall blocks the offending session for the period of time defined by the Block Duration. Start with the default threshold value (3600 seconds), monitor packet buffer utilization, and adjust the threshold as necessary. When you enable Packet Buffer Protection on a zone, Block Duration affects every session from the IP address even if only one session from an IP address overutilizes the packet buffer. If you believe that blocking an IP address for one hour (3600 seconds) is too great a penalty, reduce the Block Duration to an acceptable value.
    In addition to monitoring the buffer utilization of individual sessions, Packet Buffer Protection can also block an IP address if certain criteria are met. While the firewall monitors the packet buffers, if it detects a source IP address rapidly creating sessions that would not individually be seen as an attack, it blocks that IP address for the configured Block Duration.
    Network Address Translation (NAT) (an external source that has translated its internet-bound traffic using source NAT) can give the appearance of greater packet buffer utilization because of IP address translation activity. If this occurs, adjust the thresholds in a way that penalizes individual sessions but doesn’t penalize the underlying IP addresses (so other sessions from the same IP address aren’t affected). To do this, reduce the Block Hold Time so the firewall blocks individual sessions that overutilize the buffers faster, and reduce the Block Duration so that the underlying IP address is not unduly penalized.

    Packet Buffer Protection Based on Latency

    As an alternative to packet buffer protection based on utilization, you can trigger packet buffer protection based on packet latency caused by dataplane packet buffering, which indicates congestion on the firewall. Such packet buffer protection mitigates head-of-line blocking by alerting you to the congestion and performing random early drop (RED) on packets. Packet buffer protection based on latency can trigger the protection before latency-sensitive protocols or applications are affected.
    If your traffic includes protocols or applications that are latency-sensitive, then packet buffer protection based on latency will be more helpful than packet buffer protection based on buffer utilization.
    Packet buffer protection based on latency includes setting a Latency Alert threshold (in milliseconds), above which the firewall starts generating an Alert log event. The Latency Activate threshold indicates when the firewall activates RED on incoming packets and starts generating an Activate log. The Latency Max Tolerate threshold indicates when the firewall uses with RED with almost 100% drop probability.
    The Block Hold Time and Block Duration settings function for packet buffer protection based on latency in the same way they do for packet buffer protection based on utilization.

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