Network Design - Cisco 5515-X IPS vs. Cisco 2901

[samuel1.davis]

Hi Guys,

I am designing a network of 50 users from scratch. Security is very important due to HIPAA and a few other regulations. My first thought was to use the Cisco ASA 5515-X IPS as my external firewall and the Cisco 2901 as the internal firewall and policy-based routing. Is a two firewall dmz necessary or will one of these firewalls be sufficient?

What would be a suitable internal router to hang my switches off of? Looks like I may need a few more Ethernet LAN interfaces than the 2901 provides.

I am designing this network with site to site VPN, IPsec, 3DES/AES, and HIPAA in mind.

Any insight or suggestions?

[Collin Clark]

The ASA is a good choice for an edge device. For routing on the inside, I suggest you look at the 3850. It's a layer three switch and should give you a good feature set with good performance.

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App