6.1. An Overview of PIX
The purpose of the Cisco PIX Firewall Series is to extend Cisco's famous presence to the emerging market of hardware-based firewalls—especially in smaller businesses. As a result, Cisco is attempting to provide enterprise service in a small box for networks that are connected to the Internet in an "always on" fashion.
Frankly, Cisco has done a good job of placing sophisticated capabilities in a relatively inexpensive, easy-to-administer, small package. Firewall features of PIX include the following:
Adaptive Security Algorithm (ASA)
The inspection process that looks at the state (or context) of each packet.
Access control
PIX predefines more than 85 protocols, services, and applications for rapid and flexible administration. ...
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