** The author of the text designed a benchmark to investigate the performance impact of SSL network encryption on SingleStoreDB Self-Managed 4, a NoSQL database. The test compared the performance with and without SSL enabled, using identical workloads and server configurations. The results showed that enabling SSL resulted in a 25% decrease in write throughput and a 16% drop in read throughput, along with increased median latency. However, the author notes that these findings may not generalize to all scenarios and queries, as the impact of SSL can vary depending on the specific use case. The benchmark serves as an example of how to design and execute a well-structured test to answer specific questions about a database's performance under different conditions.