Cisco announces the end-of-sale and end-of life dates for the Cisco� PIX Security Appliance Cards and Hardware Accessories. The last day to order the affected product(s) is January 27, 2009. Customers with active service contracts will continue to receive support from the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) as shown in Table 1 of the EoL bulletin. Table 1 describes the end-of-life milestones, definitions, and dates for the affected product(s). Table 2 lists the product part numbers affected by this announcement. For customers with active and paid service and support contracts, support will be available until the termination date of the contract, even if this date exceeds the Last Date of Support shown in Table 1.

Cisco PIX Security Appliance customers are encouraged to migrate to Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances. In addition to providing the same robust firewall and IPsec VPN capabilities as Cisco PIX Security Appliances, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series offers significantly better performance and scalability, SSL VPN support, advanced Unified Communications (voice/video) security, and a modular design that allows customers to add features such as intrusion prevention (IPS), antivirus, antispam, antiphishing, URL filtering, and more. Migration to the Cisco ASA 5500 Series is straightforward, as consistent management and monitoring interfaces are provided, allowing customers to take advantage of their knowledge and investment in Cisco PIX Security Appliances.