PIX or Router for VPN

[guo6688]

My company plan to deploy site to site VPN. Right now, we have two proposals. One is to use Cisco router 7206 as VPN head-end, another is PIX 535. And two sides argue so much for that. Obviously PIX 535 is cheaper than 7206. If both proposal are same, is there any reason to use Cisco 7206?

My company network feature are:

1.IP based network

2.Run Oracle ERP system

3.Video or voice but outside VPN

4.Muticast unknow?

5.maybe one hundred plus branches one day in future

We studied documnetations in Cisco web site , it seems they are equal.

So please give us some ideas. Thanks a lot.

Philip

[lucifuge]

This may just be my experience, or my confort zone, but I find that more complex site-to-site VPN's are better handled by an IOS device.

I use GRE over IPSec with EIGRP. The PIXen won't do that, as far as I know. Again, I may be missing something, but that lack of a "reload in x" command on the PIX makes remote configuration of crypto maps a bit more "exicting" than I like.

[dean_holroyd]

ios advantages

1) its a router .... you can use wan interfaces unlike the pix which is only ethernet, so you can combine the perimiter router + vpn functionality into one device.

2) As the other person said, you can run routing protocols etc over GRE tunnels, so redundant links can be handled by the routing protocol instead of the IKE keepalives