On hardware LoadMaster models containing a Cavium SSL ASIC card, there is an additional metric to consider called Cavium TPS. An ASIC is an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit; this provides acceleration for SSL handshakes. This allows SSL offloading to be dramatically accelerated while also reducing CPU load versus comparable models without the ASIC. Each model has a limited SSL TPS which can be accomplished with the card. This will limit the amount of new SSL connections per second regardless of other metrics.