Cisco PIX 515E
The Cisco PIX 515E Firewall was designed for small- to medium-size businesses. The PIX
515E is the smallest firewall of the PIX family that is designed to be rack-mountable and is
a standard 1U (1.75-inch) configuration. It has a 433-MHz processor, 32 MB or 64 MB of
RAM, and 16 MB of Flash memory. It has two fixed 10/100 Ethernet interfaces that have a
default configuration of outside (Ethernet 0) and inside (Ethernet 1) and contains two PCI
slots for the installation of up to four additional Ethernet interfaces.
The PIX 515E also supports the use of virtual interfaces for switched environments using
802.1q VLAN tagging. It has a 9600-baud console port that is used for local device
management. The PIX 515E can be configured for failover using a failover cable connected
to the 115-kbps serial connection. PIX Firewall OS version 6.2 provides the functionality for
long-distance (LAN-based) failover. This is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 11,
“Routing and the Cisco Security Appliance.”
Connection capabilities for the PIX 515E are as follows:
■ Maximum clear-text throughput—188 Mbps
■ Maximum throughput (3DES)—63 Mbps with VAC
■ Maximum throughput (3DES)—140 Mbps with VAC+
■ Maximum throughput (AES-128)—135 Mbps with VAC+
■ Maximum throughput (AES-256)—140 Mbps with VAC+
■ Maximum concurrent connections—130,000
■ Maximum concurrent VPN peers—2000
As shown in Figure 3-7, the PIX 515E has three status LEDs on the front panel that indicate
power to the system, that the system is active (the OS is fully loaded and the system is
operational), and that there is network activity on any interface. If you have two firewalls
running in thefailover mode, the active light indicates which firewall is active and which is
standby.