Customer Reviews

Cisco ASA 5510 Appliance - security appliance ( ASA5510-BUN-K9 )

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I've dealt with 4 of these and all I can say is be very weary of upgrading if you are switching these out from a PIX. The PIX 6.x series software were so robust and stable. Now that they retired that line and started the ASA's with the 7.x/8.x code, they are prone to massive bugs and it takes a lot of wasted time researching Cisco articles to find all the tweaks and fixes to make them operational.

Specifically, after switching out our PIX to these newer Cisco ASA models, nothing but problems with massive VPN fragmentation and obscure packet dropping unrelated to ACLs. I had to go back to the PIX at one site due to too many problems with DNS lookups/simple web browsing/FTP connections. I feel they branched out with too many versions of their software images and failed to develop one stable version. Also, the java GUI is a joke, guessing it was an attempt at making it friendlier to configure/monitor but just fails in every aspect.

I have two of these, thought they would go great in our office and Colo. While it appears these should be good for a small office they lack usability. Here's the issue, the Asa has 4 interfaces, I have three lans and the wan on each. I cannot route from the 3 internal interfaces and have been on the phone with Cisco for almost a week now trying to get this working.
My setup is -e/0 for servers 10.1.1.x net e/1 is for users, a 192.168.0.x net and a phones(ip) net. Then set each security level to 100 and check the box, "Enable communication between interfaces with the same security level". Now one would think routing should work. but no. For whatever reason the device will not route as intended. I can get it to route for a few minutes then it dies.
If you have a simple network this ASA may work for your office. But don't expect it to work very easily. I even tried the setup in their easy setup guide provided with the unit. After overcoming the typo's I still could not get this unit to work.

I was able to get one unit working in very simple config, only have one LAN and one WAN connection with no internal routing or DMZ config.

Either you know this product or you don't. Works great but you have to be a cisco guy or hire one for it to be of any use to you.