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IPSec vs Anyconnect

Antonio Knox
Level 7
Level 7

I need help wrapping my head around the differences between the Cisco IPsec Client and Anyconnect SVC, besides the fact that IPSec client is a manual install while Anyconnect installs and uninstalls itself on its own.

I mean, what does IPsec client do that Anyconnect can't or vice versa? And before you mention it, I already know that Anyconnect supports 64-bit vista (that seems to be a very popular answer).

2 Replies 2

ajagadee
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Hi,

I havent seen a document that directly compares the IPSEC Client vs Anyconnect. But, below are some FAQ URL that should help answer some questions. Also, one big factor in making your decision is going to be the Type of VPN server that you are planning to use. For example, some of the newer clients are not supported on Pix/VPN3000.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/vpndevc/ps5743/ps5699/ps2308/prod_qas09186a008017dbed.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps8411/products_qanda_item09186a00809aec31.shtml

Regards,

Arul

*Pls rate if it helps*

ddawson
Level 1
Level 1

From a user perspective the IPSec and AnyConnect clients provide very similar functionality once they're installed. Under the hood, the IPSec client uses IPSec encryption (duh) whereas the AnyConnect client uses SSL encryption, which is significantly more processor intensive. With computers these days that's not really much of an issue at the user end, but if you're trying to scale to a very large number of users at the head end it could be a factor. The biggest difference is in the licensing cost. There is no incremental licensing cost for the IPSec client, either for the number of users or for the client software. There *is* a non-trivial cost for the AnyConnect client, however, which may or may not be worth the possibly reduced administrative costs of getting the client installed on all the end-user systems.

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