Can Cisco Pix be used as a router and a firewall?

Hi,

I am after a hardware filewall and a router and was wondering if I could use a cisco Pix (probably 501) to route between 2 different subnets or vlans and to also be a firewall between those 2 subnets or vlans?

If not, does anyone have any suggestions for a cheap implementation which I could use? Router needs to have 100 Mbit interfaces and the firewall should preferably allow for VPN tunneling.

Cheers,

Edd

If you are looking at Cisco equipment anyway, you may want to check out the Cisco 800 series routers.

In article , EdD wrote: :I am after a hardware filewall and a router and was wondering if I :could use a cisco Pix (probably 501) to route between 2 different :subnets or vlans and to also be a firewall between those 2 subnets or :vlans?

For the PIX 501, only if one of the subnets is internal and the other is external. The PIX 501 does not support more than inside + outside interface, and does not support VLANs, and does not support routing on the same interface going back again.

The next model up, the PIX 506E, supports 2 VLANs that can be attached to the inside interface, giving you a total of 3 logical interfaces on the one physical interface. That would handle what you asked for, provided that you have an inside 802.1Q compatible switch (or host NICs.)

The models above that get increasingly more flexible, expecially with the new PIX 7.0 software; 7.0 is not available on the PIX 501 or 506/506E.

But have a look at the performance, which is only 7000pps for this model.

just my $0.02

Wolfgang

For the 806, yes, but the 870 models the number is 25,000pps.