ASA5505 issues

[Neil Cudmore]

Here's the story...

I have a ASA5505 sitting at home on the end of my ADSL/2 connection, working happily away for the last few years.

Then along comes this upgrade from ADSL/2 to vDSL, so my ISP connection speed jumps from 8.5Mbps down to 72Mbps down and from 1Mbps up to 18.25Mbps up.

However on testing the connection speed through the ASA I'm only getting about half the speed of the actual connection.

I checked the CPU and memory use graphs in ADSM and can't really see any issue.

Now it is an older ASA and only has 512K memory, but given the memory in use on the ADSM graph's show a near constant 65-70% use, I'm not sure this is the issue. 

I took the ASA out of the loop, and everything tests fine, with 70+Mbps showing on the speed tests down instead of 36-40Mbps when the ASA is plugged in.

Is it really just not man enough for the job?  Would upping the memory to 1Gb help?  I tried a couple of versions of the IOS and got pretty much the same results each time, so I'm guessing it's not the just the version of IOS I had on there.

One idea that did crop up was the ASA5505 only have 100mb ports, and the BT supplied vDSL modem is gigabit.  I have seen 'issues' where even though I have fixed the ports on 100mb full duplex, the other device want's to keep trying to sync at 1GB and then fail's, but I can't see this showing on the ASA if this is the issue and the BT device is locked down.

I could connect the vDSL modem to my 3560G switch, on an 'external' vlan and then connect the ASA to the same 'external' Vlan, and then back to the switch for the 'inside' network...

But has anyone else go any idea where the issue(s) might be?

[Vibhor Amrodia]

Hi,

I think if you check the reference guides for this platform , this platform is capable of supporting more bandwidth.(I would not say the exact numbers apply as those are ideal conditions test.)

Although , i think the point that you referred with the matching speeds on the ASA ports and Switch is worth a try.

Also , I think check for interface stats and try to see the transfer speeds on the ASA device with something like FTP transaction as well.

Verify the configuration also once to be sure.

Thanks and Regards,

Vibhor Amrodia

[Neil Cudmore]

Had a look as the Spec sheet...

Now this is the bit I'm concerned about is the fact I have used the basic IPS functions.  However, in the spec sheet it state in relation to the IPS "Up to 75 Mbps with AIP‑SSC-5", I  am assuming this is used for off loading the processing for the IPS.

Perhaps, this is the falling.  No IPS module installed and I seem to remember the AIP‑SSC-5 was end of life a couple of years ago, can't remember even seeing one of these on their own even popping up on ebay.