Introduction to the Cisco Security Appliance Family
Adaptive Security Appliance models

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