| A1:
| Answer: Source address/port, destination address/port, and protocol. |
| A2:
| Answer: The Cisco PIX Firewall has a single embedded operating system, the adaptive security algorithm, cut-through proxy, and redundancy. |
| A3:
| Answer: The PIX Firewall can be configured in a failover configuration consisting of two firewalls. |
| A4:
| Answer: The Adaptive Security Algorithm is what the PIX Firewall uses to perform stateful inspection. The ASA not only tracks the session information in the state table but also randomly generates TCP sequence numbers to ensure that a session cannot be hijacked. |
| A5:
| Answer: Cut-through proxy is a feature that the Cisco PIX Firewall uses to authenticate and authorize a user during the initial creation of the session. Cut-through proxy uses the ASA to track session information but does not perform any proxy services. This greatly increases the firewall's performance compared to traditional proxy firewalls. |
| A6:
| Answer: The advantages are improved security, functionality, and performance. |