Cisco IOS ZFW vs ASA

Hi all, the ASA is Cisco’s premiere firewall solution with most of their marketing leading people towards the ASA when they need a firewall. The Cisco IOS has more features, more horse power and is more flexible than the ASA. This leads you to question why Cisco just doesn’t use the licensing model that they introduced with the ISR G2 routers and add a column entitled ASA or Firewall and put all of their features into that, discontinue the ASA and call it a day.

Sure there is an argument for a firewall that doesn’t have all of the features of a router but that is a little bit like saying no wants to break into a crappy sub-mini-car but the RV but the SUV has lots of stuff in it so let’s go for that one. Given the choice I would rather have the standard command line interface and routing abilities of the router rather than lock myself into a firewall platform that has fewer features simply because someone told me the firewall is what I should have. What are your thoughts?

Until next time,
TechSto (JW)