Cisco ASA Releases

[Andy Doe]

Hi there,

I have a general Question concerning ASA releases. Cisco released Version
8.0.5.ED on Nov.3 2009. Release 8.2.1.ED was released in May 2009. Can
anybody tell me the differences between these releases. I am a little
confused because a lower Version Number (8.0.x) is released later than a
higher release number (8.2.x) Why is that?

Any hints appreciated.

Thx...Andy

[Doug McIntyre]

"Andy Doe" <anh...@gmail.com> writes:
>I have a general Question concerning ASA releases. Cisco released Version
>8.0.5.ED on Nov.3 2009. Release 8.2.1.ED was released in May 2009. Can
>anybody tell me the differences between these releases. I am a little
>confused because a lower Version Number (8.0.x) is released later than a
>higher release number (8.2.x) Why is that?

Cisco maintains multiple code trains for each device, so people can
stay in the same general code rev and not be blindsided by new features
or difference in how things work but still apply bugfixes.

Cisco generally has their version number scheme be MAJOR.MINOR(BUGFIX)

Thus, 8.0(5)ED would generally be the 8th Major release, in the 0th's minor
train, and the 5th bugfix release.

8.2(1) is 8th Major release, 2nd minor train, and 1st bugfix release.

Since they maintain multiple codetrains at the same time, when a bug
is found, it could be applied to 8.0, 8.2, 7.2, 7.1, etc. . Sometimes
the bug might not exist or be already fixed in another train.

Ie. 8.0(4)ED was release in 10/Aug/2008, 8.2(1) is the first release
for that minor code train. Not sure what 8.2(1.11) was.

[alexd]

Meanwhile, at the comp.dcom.sys.cisco Job Justification Hearings, Andy Doe
chose the tried and tested strategy of:

> I have a general Question concerning ASA releases. Cisco released Version
> 8.0.5.ED on Nov.3 2009. Release 8.2.1.ED was released in May 2009. Can
> anybody tell me the differences between these releases.

These may be of interest:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa82/release/notes/asarn82.html
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/asa/asa80/release/notes/asa805rn.html

Annoyingly enough the Feature Navigator [cisco.com/go/fn] doesn't seem to
cope with ASA.

> I am a little confused because a lower Version Number (8.0.x) is released
> later than a higher release number (8.2.x) Why is that?

It's common practice to keep releasing updates for different branches of a
piece of software, for example to fix bugs and security issues. This appears
to be less common for consumer-oriented software.

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