Cisco PIX/ASA

Hello Cisco Experts,

As a small business consultant I finally have to learn Cisco. Just enough to do the basic setup/configure (open/close ports, vpn site-site, port forwarding, etc) for small businesses. I've done alot of research the last few days between the PIX and ASA and I'm just not 100% sure which I should learn. I figure the best way for me to learn is to just get a book and some kind of virtual software CD etc... Here are my questions though:

1. For small businesses what version should I learn, PIX or ASA?

2. If I learn PIX, will I be able to walk into a client and configure ASA as well, and vice versa? (I read something about IOS 7.X on a PIX is the ASA version???)

3. Can someone please point me in the right direction on this confusing road I'm on?

I dont want to purchase training material and spend valuable hours learning PIX or ASA just to find out I should have chosen the other.

I have networking experience and can configure 3rd party firewalls and have some experience with ISA 2004 so I'm not a nebie in networking just a total newbie Cisco wise.

Any training material you have found to be valuable please let know.

Thanks for your support and feedback!!!

PIX and ASA run the same configuration starting in the 7.x train. You can take the pix configuration and dump it into an ASA and it would work. The ASA is a combination of a PIX+VPN Server (Altiga 3xxx VPN Concentrator).

Hello Cisco Experts,

As a small business consultant I finally have to learn Cisco. Just enough to do the basic setup/configure (open/close ports, vpn site-site, port forwarding, etc) for small businesses. I've done alot of research the last few days between the PIX and ASA and I'm just not 100% sure which I should learn. I figure the best way for me to learn is to just get a book and some kind of virtual software CD etc... Here are my questions though:

1. For small businesses what version should I learn, PIX or ASA?

2. If I learn PIX, will I be able to walk into a client and configure ASA as well, and vice versa? (I read something about IOS 7.X on a PIX is the ASA version???)

3. Can someone please point me in the right direction on this confusing road I'm on?

I dont want to purchase training material and spend valuable hours learning PIX or ASA just to find out I should have chosen the other.

I have networking experience and can configure 3rd party firewalls and have some experience with ISA 2004 so I'm not a nebie in networking just a total newbie Cisco wise.

Any training material you have found to be valuable please let know.

Thanks for your support and feedback!!!

Hi,

May the belo points can shed light on your road, please check this:

A Cisco PIX is a dedicated hardware firewall appliance.A Cisco ASA is a new firewall and anti-malware security appliance from Cisco Systems. (Don't confuse this product with what a PIX uses for stateful packet filtering—the adaptive security algorithm, or ASA.)

While the PIX is an excellent firewall, the landscape of security has changed over the years. It's no longer sufficient to protect your network with a stateful packet filtering firewall. There are so many new threats to a network—including viruses, worms, unwanted applications (e.g., P2P, games, instant messaging), phishing, and application-layer attacks.
When a device does protect against this variety of threats, we say it offers "anti-X" capability or "multi-threat" protection. But the PIX just hasn't been able to offer this level of protection.

In ASA you can configure 10 virtual firewalls as well which is known as contexting.

And it also supports Stateful failover.These days many organisations wnt to sitch to ASA because of ts vesatility and in future may be ASA will be widely accepted.

I suggest you to refer the Cisco press book (CCSP)644-523 for SNPA whcih will shapen your knowledge.

SO it is for you to decide now which one to choose. Good luck

>>BYE
#REdpix

The PIX was just announced as EoL (End of Life) so I would say the ASA is the future

The config on both is basically the same.

Try here, not sure if you need to register or not..

www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6120/prod...n_examples_list.html