Just a quick question....at work we always have our PIX 506e firewall on.
I have a home lab that uses a PIX 506 and up until now I have generally switched it off at night when not needed to save on power...I only use it to practise on and, whilst it does handle NAT and DHCP, there maybe the odd night when I'll not be accessing the internet at home so there is no need to leave the PIX and ADSL modem switched on.
Does anyone have any experience with doing this to a switch regularly? Are they designed to be left on for the majority of the time so almost daily switching on/off may cause damage?
Not electrical damage, but mechanical damage is a possibility. The PIX 501 in particular should not have its power supply disconnected at the unit: the connection is just too fragile. The 506 connector is -better- but there is still a risk of pushing the connector socket into the unit. If you must turn it off, turn off the outlet it is connected to.
Power Autoswitching: 100V to 240V RMSCurrent: 0.7 - 0.4AFrequency: 50-60 Hz, single phaseHeat dissipation PIX 506E chassis: 102.4 BTU/hr, full power usage (30W)Heat dissipation PIX 506E plus power adapter: 204.6 BTU/hr, full power usage (60 VA)
60 VA? Very roughly, the same as a 60 Watt light-bulb.
Yes
Yes
Leaving it on 24/7 exposes the device to any "strange" electrical power glitches. If the power is clean - no problem. If the power is crappy, then you increase the _chance_ for damage. Running the system all the time also increases the exposure to those nasty crackers out on the Internet.
Switching on/off causes temperature cycling - things tend to expand as they warm up, contract as they cool down. This can cause mechanical fatigue. When you turn _on_ the system, there is typically a surge of power into the unit. Think of a dam totally blocking a stream. When the dam is removed, there is a lot of movement of water. Once things calm down, the flow of the stream is probably small in comparison. (You may notice that incandescent light bulbs tend to fail when you turn them on, not after they've been on for a few minutes. The starting surge, and the temperature cycling [which is much worse in a bulb] is the cause.) The wear and tear to a power switch - yes that occurs as well, but the switches are _usually_ rated for at least tens of thousands of operations. Think of the light switch on the light in the bath room. How often do you use that switch, and how often do you replace it? For perspective,
10,000 cycles at two per day is 13.7 years.
Bottom line - as long as you aren't overheating the unit by keeping it in a poorly ventilated location, there's no real benefit either way. The
60 Watts running all the time (43 KWH per month) _might_ be more important.
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