Cisco ASA 5540 Model

The Cisco ASA 5540 appliances provide security services to medium to large enterprises. The Cisco ASA 5540 model supports a higher number of security contexts (50) to provide more flexibility and compartmentalized control of security policies. It also provides support for up to 10 appliances in a VPN cluster, supporting a maximum of 50,000 IPSec VPN peers per cluster (25,000 for WebVPN).

Cisco ASA 5540 is also a 1RU device. The external front and back layouts of Cisco ASA 5540 appliance are identical to those of the Cisco ASA 5510 and 5520 appliances. Figure 3-5 illustrates the front view of Cisco ASA 5540.

Figure 3-5. Cisco ASA 5540 Front View

Figure 3-6 illustrates the back view of Cisco ASA 5540.

Figure 3-6. Cisco ASA 5540 Back View

Table 3-3 lists the capabilities of the Cisco ASA 5540 appliance and its performance and connection limit numbers.

Table 3-3. Cisco ASA 5540 Model Capabilities

Description	Without VPN Plus License	With VPN Plus License	With VPN Premium License
Firewall throughput	Up to 650 Mbps	Up to 650 Mbps	Up to 650 Mbps
3DES/AES IPSec VPN throughput	Up to 325 Mbps	Up to 325 Mbps	Up to 325 Mbps
Connections	280,000	280,000	280,000
IPSec VPN peers	500	2000	5000
WebVPN peers	500	1250	2500
Interfaces	Four Gigabit Ethernet ports for security services and one Fast Ethernet port for OOB management	Four Gigabit Ethernet ports for security services and one Fast Ethernet port for OOB management	Four Gigabit Ethernet ports for security services and one Fast Ethernet port for OOB management
Virtual interfaces (VLANs)	100	100	100
High availability	Active/Active and Active/Standby	Active/Active and Active/Standby	Active/Active and Active/Standby
VPN scalability	VPN clustering and load balancing	VPN clustering and load balancing	VPN clustering and load balancing
Threat mitigation throughput (IPS, firewall, and Anti-X)	Up to 450 Mbps with AIP-SSM-20	Up to 450 Mbps with AIP-SSM-20	Up to 450 Mbps with AIP-SSM-20
Security contexts	Up to 50	Up to 50	Up to 50