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I am trying to understand why and what the advantage of deploying CISCO ASA 5500 if all my computers in the WLAN are windows XP based and windows XP supports IPSec as well as VPN.<br />
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I am trying to understand why and what the advantage of deploying CISCO ASA 5500 if all my computers in the WLAN are windows XP based and windows XP supports IPSec as well as VPN.



Why use Cisco ASA 5500 security appliance?

Software firewalls, also known as host-based firewalls, provide a layer of software on one host that controls network traffic in and out of that single machine. Most operating systems now include firewall software, but many available software firewalls include central distribution, antivirus systems and disaster recovery.

Software Firewalls

A virtual private network (VPN) is a network that uses a public telecommunication infrastructure, such as the Internet, to provide remote offices or travelling users access to a central organizational network securely. VPNs encapsulate data transfers using secure cryptographic methods and other security mechanisms to ensure that only authorized users can access the network and that the data cannot be intercepted.

Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a protocol suite for secure Internet Protocol (IP) communications by authenticating and encrypting each IP packet of a communication session. IPsec includes protocols for establishing mutual authentication between agents at the beginning of the session and negotiation of cryptographic keys to be used during the session. IPsec can be used in protecting data flows between a pair of hosts (host-to-host), between a pair of security gateways (network-to-network), or between a security gateway and a host (network-to-host). IPsec is an end-to-end security scheme operating in the Internet Layer of the Internet Protocol Suite.