PIX 515 stateful lan failover - switch or crossover cables

[kevburgess]

I believe I know the answer, but I wanted to get opinions. I have read that a dedicated switch is required, but I have also seen the documentation mention a crossover cable.

Is it necessary to have a dedicated switch between the Primary and Secondary PIX ?

TIA

[thisisshanky]

I have seen that in documents, Not sure why Cisco suggests that way, but I have tried it with Cross cable and it works.

[rsmith]

If you are using LAN based failover, a dedicated switch is required between the firewalls. If you have set up Stateful failover, with the short failover cable, you can use a cross-over cable directly between the failover interfaces. (Note that with Stateful failover, prior to version 7, the failover interfaces could also be used as an active traffic interface. With version 7, this is no longer allowed)