Help Choosing products for Routing/firewall/vpn

[moconnor]

currently have cable modem connection to the internet with a Linksys router doing NAT. I am not sure which hardware to go with, that will work with the cable connection. I think I have it narrowed down to a PIX 515E and a 1700 series switch. Would the 1700 router work with the cable modem? If I use that combo, how would I go about configuring the two to work together? Does the router go before the firewall or vice versa? I have no real experience with Cisco products so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

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Marc

[mchin345]

Cisco has the uBR 900 series Cable Access routers which can attach to the cable network directly and functions as a cable modem as well as either a bridge or router. You do not need separate cable modems for connecting them to the network. I don't think the 1700 router can connect to a cable network. For more information about the uBR 900 series devices, you can look at

http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/Support/browse/psp_view.pl?p=Hardware:ubr900&viewall=true

When you use a firewall and a router, the connection from the service provider typically terminates on a router which is attached to the firewall through a LAN connection. Another port on the firewall is connected to your private network where you have hosts and other devices. Moreover the PIX firewalls have only ethernet interfaces. So for your requirement, you need to connect the uBR 900 series device to the cable network and then connect it to the PIX through an ethernet interface. The other interface on PIX should then connect to your internal network. Hope this helps.