Technical Tip: Network Processor (NP) module on FortiGate virtual appliance

Network Processor is a hardware acceleration module that is used to offload high volume network traffic.

As the name implies, it is only available for the FortiGate Hardware platform.

To check what kind of network processor that FortiGate has :

FortiGate-1200D # get hardware status
Model name: FortiGate-1200D
ASIC version: CP8
ASIC SRAM: 64M
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz
Number of CPUs: 8
RAM: 16063 MB
Compact Flash: 15331 MB /dev/sda
Hard disk: 228936 MB /dev/sdb
USB Flash: not available
Network Card chipset: Broadcom 570x Tigon3 Ethernet Adapter (rev.0x5717100)
Network Card chipset: FortiASIC NP6 Adapter (rev.)   <----

While for virtual appliances, the module does not exist.

FGT-VM (global) # get hardware status
Model name: FortiGate-VM64-KVM
ASIC version: not available
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v4 @ 2.40GHz
Number of CPUs: 1
RAM: 1993 MB
Compact Flash: 2056 MB /dev/vda
Hard disk: 16384 MB /dev/vdb
USB Flash: not available

FortiGate VM does not include a network processor because it is a virtual appliance that runs on standard servers, not on custom hardware. Unlike physical FortiGate devices, which use built-in NPUs and ASICs for high-speed processing, FortiGate VM relies entirely on software and the host system’s CPU to handle traffic.

For more information about other network processors, review Network processors (NP7, NP7Lite, NP6, NP6XLite, and NP6Lite) - FortiGate hardware acceleration guide.