Cisco 501 Pix - Cable Modem - Wireless Router.....

Most PIX 501 configuration information is over in comp.dcom.sys.cisco .

You have a problem: you almost certainly did not receive a license to *use* the PIX 501. The software is not transferable except under certain (usually expensive) conditions. Cisco does not sell the PIX line retail, so their license terms are legally enforceable except where specific laws override those terms (Germany and Denmark, possibly a few other countries that I haven't been able to prove as yet.)

In order to legally use the PIX 501 you probably need to "relicense" it from Cisco. The Cisco part number is LL-PIX-501-SW-10. Prices vary a fair bit on it; the lowest I see at the moment is $US161, list price is $US195 .

Plug the PIX 501 into the cable modem. Plug the wireless router and the Asus PC into the pix 501. Use the Gateway and Dell wireless, or else plug them into the back of the PIX 501.

The PIX 501 has one port to plug into the WAN (the cable modem), and a block of four ports for your inside network. Those four ports act as a switch.

For the wireless router, you will likely find it easiest to

*not* use the WAN ("outside") interface and to turn off the routing functions. Instead, connect one of the *inside* ports to the PIX 501, and use the same subnet for everything internal.

Be sure to use good wireless encryption, not just 40 bit WAP -- that can be broken in a small number of hours. If your wireless router doesn't support good encryption, then install the Cisco VPN Client software on the Gateway and Dell, and configure a VPN on the PIX against the *inside* interface so that you are using a VPN over the wireless to get your data to the PIX. Unfortunately if you do this, you will not be able to communicate locally between the systems. If that's a problem then there are other configurations that could be suggested, but I'm not going to go into those until you have digested all of this.

Hello,

I think I understand the wiring concept. As a test I wired it this way. I was not suprised that I was then not able to connect to the internet. I assume that this is because I did not configure the PIX firewall software via hyper terminal or the GUI configuration that I get from going to 192.168.1.1.

I should add that I have the PIX console wired to COM1 on my PC.

So.

What iare the next steps? I guess that I now need to configure the software side? Any suggestions or basic steps would be appreciated. The "Basic Cisco PIX 501" searches that I Google are still pretty far over my head so the more basic the better.

Thanks Again.

Perhaps

Hello,

I think I understand the wiring concept. As a test I wired it this way. I was not suprised that I was then not able to connect to the internet. I assume that this is because I did not configure the PIX firewall software via hyper terminal or the GUI configuration that I get from going to 192.168.1.1.

I should add that I have the PIX console wired to COM1 on my PC.

So.

What iare the next steps? I guess that I now need to configure the software side? Any suggestions or basic steps would be appreciated. The "Basic Cisco PIX 501" searches that I Google are still pretty far over my head so the more basic the better.

Thanks Again.

And in particular, you may wish to start with

configure factory default

That will clean out any old configuration, configure your inside interface for 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 and configure your outside interface to attempt to get an IP address via DHCP, which would be typical for cable modems. It will also configure the PIX to allow traffic from 192.168.1.* out, and to allow most responses to that traffic, but not to allow new connections from the outside (internet) to the inside.