ASA 5505 Firewall Practice

In the interim before studying for CCNP, I have decided to get in some firewall practice. As I stated in earlier posts, I recently purchased a Cisco ASA 5505 with the Security Plus Bundle. As promised, pics are below. Currently the configuration is basic. As I continue to implement the ASA into my network topology as a fully active security appliance, I will post more pics, topologies, and configurations. Right now, it is only firewalling my lab network and our home desktop PC so my Vyatta build remains my Internet gateway/edge and firewall device for my WLAN. Enjoy.

The ASA sits quietly on top of my Vyatta Internet Router/Firewall

I will ultimately want to purchase the rack kit for the 5505.

The black Vyatta box below is starting to accumulate dust...

The ASA is a nice addition and adds some variety to my growing lab.

The ASA 5505 has 8 switchports e0/0 rather than routed interfaces.

I was able to easily add the ASA to my out-of-band Cyclades ACS.

The ASDM for those of us who find [Cisco] firewall CLIs a bit daunting.

The ASDM makes managing ACLs a lot easier for firewall novices.

Other services such as DHCP and NAT are also easily managed in the ASDM.

The ASDM is nice, but the CLI is where all the magic is.

The Security Plus license is the ceiling for an ASA 5505 model.

Using switchports as opposed to routed interfaces means VLANs.