pix 500 series vs asa 550 series

[dan_track]

Hi

I'm looking to purchase a firewall. I was wondering should I purchase a pix 515e/525 or an asa 5520/40.

Could someone please highlight the difference or the benefit/disadvantage of each.

The roles will be to provide security from the internet and use it to create up to 3 dMZ's with an active/standby pair.

Thanks in advance

Dan

[stomasko · Accepted solution]

Dan,

ASA is the newer of the 2 and therefor more feature rich and high performance. PIX is a firewall device that can do IDS and VPN as an extra feature. ASA was designed to do all of this from the start. One great comparison is to look at the ASA data sheet:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6120/prod_models_comparison.html

And compare it to PIX:

http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/products/ps2030/c1031/ccmigration_09186a008007d065.pdf

As you can see performance is higher across the board with the ASA. That said PIX is still a good device. I would recommend looking at the data sheets and your unique needs now and future and go from there.

Hope this helps.

Steve

[desai.jaideep]

Hi

Earlier in the market there were only firewall devices which can block/permit traffic based on access-lists.At that time this was something new.There were virses, trojans and such kind of "network disturbing elements" which were on their initial stages.There was little impact of them in the network.

With the evolution of Internet and Computer Geeks, there were new kind of threats to the networks.Alone packet filtering wont do.It was the need of time to have a dedicated equipment which can do filtering as well as are able to stop the new kind of threats.Hence, it resulted in created of UTM devices (Unified threat Management) which can detect, stop and are ready for new threats.The solution from Cisco is Adaptive Security Appliance(ASA) which have all in one solutions : Firewall, Spyware , Intrusion Prevention and even Anti Virus.

Obviously, the Cisco PIX are out of date.

You can learn more at

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6120/index.html

Hope that helps.

Pls rate helpful posts.

Regards

JD