Bandwidth is not the bottleneck
Bandwidth measures how much data is transferred. Packet rate measures how much work the system has to do.
A system can have plenty of available Gbps while already being unable to process additional packets.
Why PPS matters more
Every packet requires processing: parsing headers, lookup, filtering, forwarding decisions.
This cost is mostly constant per packet, not per byte. Smaller packets increase the workload dramatically.
Real impact
- 64-byte floods create maximum PPS pressure
- Firewalls collapse long before links are full
- Conntrack and stateful systems fail first
- Routers hit CPU limits before line rate
What this means for mitigation
Measuring attacks in Gbps alone is misleading. A lower-bandwidth, high-PPS attack is often harder to handle.
Effective mitigation focuses on reducing packet processing cost and avoiding unnecessary state.