Cisco ASA 5580 beats Check Point, Juniper, and Nokia in 10 Gbps Firewall Bakeoff

Cisco is proud to announce the availability of the Miercom performance report that compares the performance, scalability, and “greenness” of the Cisco ASA 5580 versus key datacenter security competitors. Cisco ASA 5580-40 crushed the competition - delivering significantly stronger results including 5-7X the scalability of competitors and proved to be the only viable product [...]

EoL/EoS Announcement - Cisco AVS 3120 Application Velocity System

Cisco announces the end-of-sale and end-of-life dates for the Cisco AVS 3120 Application Velocity System. The last day to order the affected product is October 21, 2008. Customers with active service contracts will continue to receive support from the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) as listed in Table 1 in the EoL announcement.
For more details, [...]

Tool: Iperf

Here is a nice tool that comes to use from Binh Phan called Iperf. It’s a great free tool for throughput testing of networking devices. For those of us who can’t afford to purchase those expensive Avalanche/Reflectors or Test Center from Spirent, Iperf works just great. I know of many customers that use this tool [...]

New Router: Cisco Secure Router 520 Series

So I was reading through the What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation for July and got down to the routers section and low and behold I came across a router that I had not heard of before. The router is called the Cisco Secure Router 520 series and looks ideal for small businesses with up [...]

PIX to ASA Conversion Tool Available on CCO

Have you tried to copy a PIX configuration directly over to your nice, new, shiny ASA? What did you think of the results of that “copy and paste”? Well contrary to popular believe although the PIX 500 Series Appliances share a common software foundation with the ASA 5500 Series Appliances, you can’t directly use a [...]

Cisco Certification Exam Security Enhancements

Cisco and its global testing provider, Pearson VUE, a business of Pearson Inc. are pleased to announce a series of security enhancements that will reinforce the integrity and value of its Career certification program.
The advanced security enhancements include the use of digital photographs for candidate-identity verification and forensic analysis of testing data. The new measures, [...]

Service Interruption

Ok so you may have noticed that my site was not available over the last day or so (not sure just how long) and in fact it may still be inaccessible depending on your provider. I had no idea this even happened as I am out on vacation this week with my family and I [...]

Introduction to Cisco IOS Software Activation and Licensing Workflows

If you are confused by the newer IOS activation feature for our Catalyst Switches and IOS Routers or maybe you are wanting a more visual explanation of how the Cisco IOS Activation Process actually works? Then you should spend a moment viewing the Cisco IOS Activation & Licensing Workflow. It takes about 20 minutes from [...]

Catalyst Fixed Switching, Certified Green

Miercom, a leading network product testcenter and consultancy, recently announced its new “Certified Green” testing program and Cisco is proud to announce that its fixed configuration switches are the first products to receive the new certification.

Miercom’s Certified Green program is based on detailed lab test results and qualitative product assessments, and is designed to provide [...]

Cisco IOS Software Activation Introduction

The Cisco IOS Software Activation approach to software licensing helps you:

Deploy, manage, upgrade, and track your Cisco software assets
Monitor compliance policies

Automated tools significantly simplify software deployment and license management, saving time and creating a foundation for software asset management.
Software Activation provides easier ways to manage tasks and minimizes the risk of noncompliance and fraud:

Simplified [...]