Cisco IPS 4200 Series Sensors

The Cisco IPS 4200 Series sensors offer a broad range of solutions providing easy integration into enterprise and service provider environments.

Cisco IPS 4200 series appliance sensors offer the following:

• Detailed traffic inspection for Layers 2 through 7

• Prevention of malicious traffic, including network viruses, worms, spyware, adware, and application abuse

• Inline-ready, providing inline intrusion prevention

• Simultaneous operation in promiscuous and inline modes

• Monitoring of multiple network subnets through the support of multiple interfaces

• Signature-based and anomaly-based detection capabilities

• A wide array of transactional performance options from 65 Mbps to 2 Gbps and media-rich performance options from 80 Mbps to 4 Gbps

• Built-in web-based management solutions integrated in the sensor software

The Cisco IPS 4200 series appliance sensors shown in Figure 20-1 offer four high-performance, purpose-built appliances that range from small- and medium-sized to large enterprise and service provider environments:

• IPS 4215: Cisco IPS 4215 is a 1 RU appliance sensor that can deliver up to 80 Mbps of transactional performance and is suitable for multiple T1/E1 and T3 environments. The 4215 supports up to five sniffing interfaces (monitoring interfaces), which allow simultaneous protection of multiple subnets with the capability to deliver both intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IPS) services within a single unit.

• IPS 4240: Cisco IPS 4240 can deliver up to 250 Mbps transactional performance providing protection in switched environments, on multiple T3 subnets. With the support of multiple 10/100/1000 interfaces, it can also be deployed on partially utilized gigabit links or fully saturated full-duplex 100 Mbps environments. Another model IPS 4240-DC is available in DC power, which is compliant with the Network Equipment Building Systems (NEBS) and can be deployed in environments that have specific requirements pertaining to NEBS Level 3 compliance.

• IPS 4255: Cisco IPS 4255 supports transactional performance at 600 Mbps and can be used to protect partially utilized gigabit subnets and traffic traversing switches that are being used to aggregate traffic from numerous subnets. Additionally, it delivers a high port density that allows effective mitigation of threats identified on multiple network subnets.

• IPS 4260: Cisco IPS 4260 can be deployed to deliver transactional performance of up to 1 Gbps of dedicated intrusion prevention protection and can be used to protect both gigabit subnets and aggregated traffic that is traversing switches from multiple subnets. This purpose-built device offers flexible deployment support for both copper and fiber network interface card (NIC) environments.

• IPS 4270: Cisco IPS 4270 supports unparalleled performance and can be deployed to deliver transactional performance of up to 2 Gbps of dedicated intrusion prevention protection. It can be used to protect both gigabit subnets and aggregated traffic that is traversing switches from multiple subnets. This purpose-built device offers flexible deployment support for both copper and fiber network interface card (NIC) environments with support for up to 16 monitoring interfaces.

Figure 20-1. Cisco IPS 4200 Series Appliance Sensors