Cisco ASA 5500 Model Comparison: Cisco ASA 5505 vs. ASA 5510 vs. ASA 5520

Cisco ASA 5500 series is a big family that has many popular Cisco ASA models chosen by users. For example, Cisco asa 5505 was designed for Small Offices, home offices and remote office security and for VPN Solutions. It supports up to 16,000 concurrent connections with security Plus license, active/Standby Failover and Site to Site, Remote access and WebVPN. And it delivers 100-Mbps firewall throughput. Cisco asa 5510 and ASA 5520, they deliever advanced security and networking services, including high-performance VPN services, for small and medium-sized business and enterprise branch offices. What are the main differences? You can check the following comparison table of Cisco asa 5505, 5510 and ASA 5520.

Cisco ASA 5505 vs. ASA 5510 vs. ASA 5520

Cisco ASA Model	ASA 5505 /Security Plus	ASA 5510 / Security Plus	ASA 5520
Stateful Inspection throughput (max1)	Up to 150 Mbps	Up to 300 Mbps	450 Mbps
Stateful Inspection throughput (multiprotocol2)	-	-	-
Next-Generation throughput3(multiprotocol)	-	-	-
ASA IPS Throughput4	Up to 75 Mbps with AIP SSC-5	Up to 150 Mbps with AIP SSM-10; 300 Mbps with AIP SSM-20	Up to 225 Mbps with AIP SSM-10; 375 Mbps with AIP SSM-20; 450 Mbps with AIP SSM-40
Concurrent sessions	10,000 /25,000	50,000 /130,000	280,000
Connections per second	4,000	9,000	12,000
Packets per second (64 byte)	85,000	190,000	320,000
3DES/AES VPN throughput5	100 Mbps	170 Mbps	225 Mbps
Site-to-site and IPsec IKEv1 client VPN user sessions	10/25	250	750
Cisco AnyConnect or Clientless VPN User Sessions6 (AnyConnect license required)	25	250	750
Cisco Cloud Web Security users	25	75	300
VLANs	3 (trunking disabled) / 20 (trunking enabled)	50 / 100	150
High-availability support7	Stateless Active/Standby Only*	Active/Acitve* and Active/Standby*	A/A and A/S
Integrated I/O	8-port FE with 2 Power over Ethernet (PoE) ports	5-port FE / 2-port 10/100/1000, 3-port FE	4-port 10/100/1000 and 1-port FE
Expansion I/O	Not available	4-port 10/100/1000 or 4-port GE (SFP)	4-port 10/100/1000 or 4-port GE (SFP)
Dual power supplies	Not available	Not available	Not available
Power	AC/DC	AC/DC	AC/DC

Notes:
¹Maximum throughput with UDP traffic measured under ideal test conditions
²Multiprotocol = Traffic profile consisting primarily of TCP-based protocols/applications like HTTP, SMTP, FTP, IMAPv4, BitTorrent, and DNS
³Throughput was measured using ASA CX Software Release 9.1.1 with multi-protocol traffic profile with both Application Visibility Control (AVC) and Web Security Essentials (WSE). Traffic logging was enabled as well.
⁴Firewall traffic that does not go through IPS service can have higher throughput.
⁵VPN throughput and sessions count depend on the ASA device configuration and VPN traffic patterns. These elements should be taken into consideration as part of your capacity planning. Maximum throughput numbers are based on IPsec IKEv1 Remote Access VPN Connectivity.
⁶2 AnyConnect Premium User Licenses are included by default
⁷A/A = Active/Active; A/S = Active/Standby
* Requires security plus license

More Related Cisco ASA Firewall Topics:

DoesCisco ASA 5500-X Series Support Both IPS and AVC/WSE in One Box?

ASA 5505vs. ASA 5510 vs. ASA 5512-X vs. ASA 5515-X

CiscoASA5510 Vs ASA5512-X or Cisco 5515-X