This firewall is designed for homes and small businesses.This firewall can support up to ten users on a basic license from Cisco. It has a 133 MHz processor and comes with 16MB's of RAM. In addition it has 8MB of Flash RAM.

The Firewall also comes with 1 uplink port and a four port switch. It does not support Layer 2 transparent fire walling. It also does not support the routing protocol OSFP which stands for Open Shortest Path First. There is no VLAN-Virtual Local Area Network.

The PIX 501 allows you to setup a VPN-Virtual Private Network easily with the Cisco Easy VPN Server. It can support up to 5 VPN users at a time. NAT will hide the IP address of this device.

The firewall supports speeds up to 60Mbps bidirectional.

When you implement cryptography such as 3DES or DES it slows down the traffic.The PIX 501 can support anywhere from 50-unlimited users depending on your license.

Administrators can remotely troubleshoot the Cisco PIX 501, thru a CLI command line, or graphical interface. The software also contains a network topology map, and policy wizards. It supports up to 3500 concurrent connections. There are many security solutions available from Cisco.