The Adaptive Security Appliance 5500 series provides a multilayered
defense for enterprise networks through rich, integrated security services,
including stateful inspection firewall services, advanced application and
protocol inspection, site-to-site and remote access VPN, WebVPN, intrusion
prevention, and robust multimedia and voice security. The traffic throughput,
number of interfaces, and number of concurrent connections vary by model.
ASA5510 Adaptive Security Appliance
The ASA5510 Adaptive Security
Appliance
delivers
enterprise-class security for small medium businesses and enterprise networks.
The modular one-rack unit (1RU) design incorporates up to five 10/100 Fast
Ethernet interfaces and supports an optional Security Services Module (SSM)
slot which provides inline IPS.
The ASA5510 Adaptive Security Appliance has a throughput of 100 Mbps with
the ability to handle up to 64,000 concurrent connections. It supports
Active/standby failover. The ASA5510 can deliver 150 Mbps IPS throughput when
an AIP SSM model 10 is added to the appliance.
ASA5520 Adaptive
Security Appliance
The ASA5520 Adaptive Security Appliance
delivers
enterprise-class security for small medium businesses and enterprise networks.
The modular one-rack unit (1RU) design incorporates four 10/100/1000 Gigabit
Ethernet interfaces and supports an SSM slot which provides inline IPS.
The ASA5520 Adaptive Security Appliance has a throughput of 200 Mbps with
the ability to handle up to 130,000 concurrent connections. It supports
active/standby and active/active failover. The ASA5520 can deliver 375 Mbps IPS
throughput when an AIP SSM model 20 is added to the appliance.
ASA5540
Adaptive Security Appliance
The ASA5540 Adaptive Security Appliance
delivers
enterprise-class security for enterprise networks. Its modular one-rack unit
(1RU) design incorporates four 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces one
10/100 Fast Ethernet management interface, and an optional Security Services
Module slot which provides inline IPS.
The ASA5540 Adaptive Security
Appliance has a throughput of 400 Mbps with the ability to handle up to 280,000
concurrent connections. The ASA5540 can deliver 450 Mbps IPS throughput when an
AIP SSM model 20 is added to the appliance.
Front Panel LEDs
The following are the ASA 5500 family front
panel LEDs
:
- Power – When the ASA 55X0 has power, the light shines.
- Status – When the power-up diagnostics are running or the system is
booting, the light flashes. When the system passes power-up diagnostics, the
green light shines. When power-up diagnostics fail, the amber light
shines.
- Active – When there is network activity, the light flashes.
- VPN – When data is passing through the interface, the light shines.
- Flash – When the compact flash is accessed, the light shines.
Back Panel
The ASA 5500 family back plane can be logically
divided into two sections. These two sections are the fixed interfaces and the
SSM slots
. The fixed
interfaces on a ASA5510 provide up to five 10/100BaseT Ethernet ports. The
ASA5520 and 5540 provide four 10/100/1000 and one 10/100 BaseT Ethernet ports
The SSM slot provides the ability to add other high performance services to the
ASA55X0 family, such as the IPS-SSM module.
Connectors
The
following lists the ASA 5520 and 5540 backplane connectors: 
- Power Supply – Supports either an AC or DC power supply module
- Console port – Used to connect a computer to the ASA 5520 and 5540 for
console operations.
- User Compact flash
- 10/100 out of band management port
- USB 2.0 ports
- Four 10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet ports
- AUX port