Difference Pix 525 and Pix 535

[thomam04]

Hello,

does anybody know what the main difference between the Pix 525 and 535 is? Cisco's documentation says that the 525 has a 600Mhz PIII CPU and the 535 a 1Ghz PIII CPU. The 400Mhz speed bump doesn't really explain the numbers below:

Pix 525(V+) Pix 535 (V+)

Max Throughput 330 Mbps 1.7 GBps

Max Throughput (AES-128) 135 Mbps 495 Mbps

The Pix 535 is over 5 times faster with clear text and over 3 times faster with AES-128. The 525 has a single 32-bit, 33-MHz PCI slot but that can't be the limiting factor.

Thanks for you thoughts.

Regards,

-Markus

[Patrick Iseli]

Check out in the QRG - Quick Reference Guide in Chapter 5: VPN & Security (PDF - 276 KB)

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/752/qrg/downloads.shtml

There are some nice tables that compares the two products.

sincerely

Patrick

[thomam04]

Hi Patrick,

thanks for you quick reply...the question was probably misleading so maybe I rephrase it.

Does anybody know why the Pix 535 is almost 4-5 times faster than the 525? The 535 CPU is only 66% faster ... so it doesn't explain it. Is there any special hardware in the 535?

Thanks!

-Markus

[scoclayton]

I don't know that there is a good way to answer this question. The PIX 535 and the PIX 525 have a completely different hardware design which allows for the higher values. The 2 differences you point out in your original post are directly related to the bus speeds on each PIX. The PIX 525 has a single 32bit/33MHz PCI bus and 3 slots. The PIX 535 has 2 64bit/66MHz buses with 2 slots each as well as

a 5 slot 32bit/33MHz bus. The PIX 535 is able to take advantage of faster cards which allow more packet throughput as well as faster hardware acceleration for encrypted traffic.

Faster CPU and more memory also help some with the throughput but these factors are used mostly to allow for more concurrent connections.

Does this help at all?

Scott

[thomam04]

Hi Scott,

thanks for your reply.

Regards,

-Markus