Passive rockfall barriers are used to mitigate the danger of falling rock and debris on steep slopes. The barriers consist of different flexible components including steel beams, cables, braking elements and wire nets. The engineering design of the net is especially important because it is one of the primary energy consuming components of the system. Nets consisting of interwoven wire rings are widespread but can fail in practice. In this paper we investigate the energy dissipation capacity of a single ring under application of two point, four point and six point tensile loading. The correctness of the theoretical results is verified by experiments. A numerical model of the ring net for application in modelling flexible barriers is then presented. We examine different support boundary conditions and rockfall impact angles on barrier response. We find the release of boundary conditions can increase the overall flexibility of the ring net. As the impact angle increases, the impact energy of the rock on the ring net will experience a gradual decline. The derived energy dissipation formulas provide a theoretical basis for engineering rockfall barriers.