Compare Cisco ASA Firewalls 5505 vs 5510 vs 5512-X and 5515
Compare Cisco ASA Firewalls
We will Compare Cisco ASA Firewalls 5505 vs 5510 vs 5512-X and 5515 in this comparison guide. When you compare Cisco ASA firewalls it needs to be in depth and this guide does just that.
| Specs | ASA 5505 | ASA 5510 | ASA 5512-X | ASA 5515-X |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max Firewall Throughput | 100 Mbps | 300 Mbps | 1 Gbps | 1.2 Gbps |
| VPN Throughput | 150 Mbps | 170 Mbps | 200 Mbps | 300 Mbps |
| IPSec Client VPN sessions | 10 | 250 | 250 | 250 |
| Concurrent Sessions | 10K | 50K | 100K | 250K |
| Interfaces | 5 x 100Mbps and 2 x 100Mbps (PoE) | 5 x 100Mbps OR 2 x 1Gbps and 3 x100Mbps with SecPlus | 6 x 1Gbps | 6 x 1Gbps |
| Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) | Need extra Hardware module | Need extra Hardware module | Supported | Supported |
ASA 5500 Series
Cisco ASA 5505 Firewall:
In 5505 firewall you have a total of 8 ports. First 6 of those are standard 100Mbps ports and last 2 are PoE (Power over Ethernet) ports mainly used for VoIP. ASA 5505 is a good entry level firewall that is more than sufficient enough to support 8 servers and has a throughput of 150 Mbps and has VPN throughput of 100 Mbps. ASA 5505 base license provides up to 10 inside hots (NAT’ed IPs) out of the box. This can be increased to 50 or Unlimited by applying Sec Plus license.
It has the following VPN capabilities:
Supports 10 IPSec VPN peers and 2 SSL VPN peers with a maximum Concurrent sessions of 10,000 with base license.
5505’s capability can be increased by applying Cisco Security Plus license that is sold separately.
Cisco ASA 5510 Firewall:
ASA 5510 is best suited for the SME market and is powerful enough for most medium sized setups. It comes with 4 ports by default and they are all set to 100Mbps.
The 5510 firewall has a throughput of 300 Mbps with support with VPN throughput of 170 Mbps.
It supports 250 IPSec VPN peers and 2 SSL VPN peers as standard. Has an increase number of Concurrent sessions at 50,000 with base license. All of this can be increased by purchasing a Cisco Security Plus license which will also enable the device to operate 2 ports at Gbps (1000Mbps).
This product is End of Life (EOL) as of September 2014!
You can read more about it on Cisco’s website.
Cisco ASA 5512-X Firewall:
These are the new ranges which will replace Cisco 5510 range. The 5512-X ASA models come with 6 Gigabit ports as standard and has a slick modern design. The built in Web Cloud security and Intrusion prevention system (IPS) enables you to secure your platform from common threats from Internet.
Back of an ASA 5512-X and 5515-X will look like this. As you can see it has status LEDs and better interface design than it’s previous models.
Cisco ASA 5515-X Firewall:
This is the most advanced firewall out of all 3 ASA firewalls we looked at so far. It has higher throughput of 1.2Gbps and has better VPN capability. The device looks exactly like the 5512-X but with more specification. 5515-X just sits below the next range of firewalls starting from 5520.
