156-315.81.20 Performance Tuning (SecureXL/CoreXL) Practice Question
If an administrator executes 'fwaccel stats -s' and notes a low 'Accelerated conns' value relative to 'Total conns', what is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often blame hardware limitations or NIC drivers rather than the security policy, forgetting that complex security policies frequently prevent SecureXL from creating the templates required for acceleration.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Traffic is not matching acceleration templates.
A low percentage of accelerated connections usually indicates that the traffic is failing to match the SecureXL acceleration templates. This often happens because the security policy is too complex, or the traffic is using features that require kernel-level handling. Investigating this disparity is essential for performance tuning because it highlights that the gateway is not operating at its peak efficiency, necessitating a review of security policies to increase acceleration coverage.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The gateway is running out of memory.
Why it's wrong here
Memory issues would typically manifest as system instability, process crashes, or high swap usage. Low acceleration counts are a symptom of policy or protocol incompatibility with the fast path, not a direct indicator of system-wide memory exhaustion or resource depletion within the gateway.
- ✓
Traffic is not matching acceleration templates.
Why this is correct
When connections fail to match acceleration templates, they cannot be processed in the fast path. This leads to a lower number of accelerated connections. This occurs when traffic characteristics or policy configurations fall outside the scope of what SecureXL can handle in the kernel.
- ✗
The license is expired.
Why it's wrong here
An expired license would impact the ability of the gateway to perform security inspections, such as disabling blades, but it would not specifically target the acceleration engine in this way. License issues are typically indicated by distinct error messages and blocked management access.
- ✗
Multi-Queue is disabled.
Why it's wrong here
Disabling Multi-Queue impacts the distribution of traffic across cores, but it does not prevent the acceleration engine itself from identifying and accelerating traffic that is otherwise compatible. Even with a single queue, the acceleration engine can still function if the traffic matches the templates.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Check Point exam blueprint
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