Technical Tip: Nturbo functions within FortiOS

[sgiannogloudis]

Description

This article describes the Nturbo feature which is a Fortinet’s hardware ASIC that improves the overall IPS performance. The particular component is installed between the NP6 and the IPS engines. It uses load balance algorithms to dynamically distribute the load to the available IPS engines. All devices which have NP6 or SOC3-based processors can benefit from this particular feature. 

Scope

FortiGate.

Solution

Feature Verification.

1. Nturbo can be enabled or even disabled globally on the box with the below commands:
   
   config ips global
       set np-accel-mode [none | basic]                             <----- None: Disables Nturbo, Basic: Enables Nturbo.

If the np-accel-mode option is not available on the firewall, it means that the FortiGate model does not support NTurbo.

Some FortiGate models on NP6/NP6Lite/NP6xLite platforms experience unexpected behavior due to certain traffic conditions after upgrading to 7.2.8. Traffic may be interrupted momentarily.

Users impacted by this issue can contact Fortinet Support. Alternatively, users can disable the processing of traffic by the IPS engine’s nTurbo as a workaround, by using the following command:

config ips global

    set np-accel-mode none

end

The issue has been reported as Bug id 1012518 and it has been resolved in 7.2.9.

2. Furthermore, Nturbo can be disabled on a per-policy basis with the below commands:
   

For IPv4 security policies: 

config firewall policy
    edit <X>
        set np-acceleration enable/disable

For IPv6 security policies: 

config firewall policy6
    edit <X>
        set np-acceleration enable/disable

For multicast security policies: 

config firewall multicast- policy
    edit <X>
        set np-acceleration enable/disable

To observe more advanced Nturbo statistics, issue the command:

diagnose test application ipsmonitor 14

Nturbo Limitations.

1. Device Identification:
   
   Interfaces that are involved in the firewall policies must have device identification disabled.
   
   
2. Session helpers:
   
   All the sessions that are being handled by session helpers cannot be offloaded to Nturbo.
   
   
3. Proxy-based features:
   
   Proxy-based applications such as proxy Antivirus should not be enabled on the firewall policies.
   As of 6.2.0 also, firewall policies involved in traffic should be configured in flow-based inspection mode.
   
   
4. Protocols:
   
   Protocols other than TCP, and UDP cannot be offloaded to Nturbo.