Editing Cisco PIX (section)

=== History ===
PIX was originally conceived in early 1994 by John Mayes of Redwood City, California and designed and coded by [[Brantley Coile]] of Athens, Georgia. The PIX name is derived from its creators' aim of creating the functional equivalent of an [[IP PBX]] to solve the then-emerging registered [[IP address]] shortage. At a time when NAT was just being investigated as a viable approach, they wanted to conceal a block or blocks of IP addresses behind a single or multiple registered IP addresses, much as PBXs do for internal phone extensions. When they began, RFC 1597 and RFC 1631 were being discussed, but the now-familiar [[Private network|RFC 1918]] had not yet been submitted.

The design, and testing were carried out in 1994 by John Mayes, Brantley Coile and Johnson Wu of Network Translation, Inc., with Brantley Coile being the sole software developer. Beta testing of PIX serial number 000000 was completed and first customer acceptance was on December 21, 1994 at KLA Instruments in San Jose, California. The PIX quickly became one of the leading enterprise firewall products and was awarded the Data Communications Magazine "Hot Product of the Year" award in January 1995.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jma.com/The_History_of_the_PIX_Firewall/NTI_files/DataComm_Jan_1995.pdf| title=History of NTI and the PIX Firewall by John Mayes}}</ref>

Shortly before Cisco acquired Network Translation in November 1995, Mayes and Coile hired two longtime associates, Richard (Chip) Howes and Pete Tenereillo, and shortly after acquisition 2 more longtime associates, Jim Jordan and Tom Bohannon. Together they continued development on Finesse OS and the original version of the Cisco PIX Firewall, now known as the PIX "Classic". During this time, the PIX shared most of its code with another Cisco product, the [[Cisco LocalDirector|LocalDirector]].

On January 28, 2008, Cisco announced the end-of-sale and [[end-of-life (product)|end-of-life]] dates for all Cisco PIX Security Appliances, software, accessories, and licenses. The last day for purchasing Cisco PIX Security Appliance platforms and bundles was July 28, 2008. The last day to purchase accessories and licenses was January 27, 2009. Cisco ended support for Cisco PIX Security Appliance customers on July 29, 2013.<ref>{{cite web |title = End of Sale for Cisco PIX Products |publisher=Cisco |date=2008-01-28 |url=http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/vpndevc/ps5708/ps5709/ps2030/qa_eos_for_sale_for_cisco_pix_products_customer.html |accessdate= 2008-02-20}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Cisco PIX 500 Series Security Appliances - Retirement Notification |publisher=Cisco |date = 2013-07-29 |url=https://www.cisco.com/c/en_intl/obsolete/security/cisco-pix-500-series-security-appliances.html |accessdate=2018-11-04}}</ref>

In May 2005, Cisco introduced the ASA which combines functionality from the PIX, VPN 3000 series and [[Intrusion-prevention system|IPS]] product lines. The ASA series of devices run PIX code 7.0 and later. Through PIX OS release 7.x the PIX and the ASA use the same software images. Beginning with PIX OS version 8.x, the operating system code diverges, with the ASA using a Linux kernel and PIX continuing to use the traditional Finesse/PIX OS combination.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa80/license/opensrce.html |title=Cisco open source license page |accessdate=2007-08-21}}</ref>