PIX 501 home/SOHO Review

to many home/small office users looking for a firewall product might think "$500 for a firewall?? are you crazy I can get a linksys bef-sx41 alot cheaper"

Cisco Pix is not your "average" firewall that Simply does Stateful packet inspection, but includes comprehensive IDS (intrusion Detection System) detection against 60 of the most common attacks hackers use. it also has a really nice HTTP/GUI Based Interface (PDM 3.1)

In addition this "$500" unit runs the exact same firewall as cisco's high end 535 units that sell for $20,000 (the exception being slower CPU, No Failover vpn limited to 10 internal) if your trying to get "Cisco Certified" this is the unit to learn on.. it also support IPSEC /L2TP VPN's radius authentication for 802.1x etc.

I've been running this in my home behind a Cable modem, and it's rock solid, all attacks have never gotten through nice thing is you save everything to ROM memory, so when a power failure occurs you don't lose settings ..

more info see
http://www.cisco.com/go/pix