[c-nsp] S/W for ASA 5550

[Justin M. Streiner]

On Sun, 27 Jan 2008, Peter Rathlev wrote:

> I'm tasked with recommending a "stable" software version for an ASA
> 5550, not that I know a lot about it. :-)
>
> My standard answer would've been to choose the oldest still maintained
> version, like 7.0(7) (or 7.0(6) which has an EAL4+ tag), but I can't
> seem to find out if ASA 5550 is supported with that version. Until 7.2
> release notes, the 5550 isn't mentioned at all.

I can't speak specifically about the 5550, but I have other ASA 5500 
series boxes running on 7.2(2) and 7.2(3) with no complaints.  As always, 
your mileage may vary and I would balance stability against security, so 
definitely do a bug scrub on the versions of code that you're considering.

> On a side note: Is it really true when they say the 5580-40 can do 14
> Gb/s "real life" firewalled throughput at 4 Mpps? The FWSM can do 5.5
> Gb/s at 2.8 Mpps according to the data sheet. I don't know the price of
> the 5580, but if it's less than twice the price of the FWSM it's very
> interesting performance wise...

I have several FWSMs in production but I haven't been able to stress them 
to the point where I can say whether the numbers in the data sheets are 
legit.  If I find out one way or the other, I'll let the list know :)

jms