Firepower 1010 ASA App

Cisco TAC would not let me obtain the free license required to use this product. I gave TAC the order number on the enclosed paper and they told me it had been "flagged for export control and I should contact my account manager"

Cisco products and support have gone from bad to worse. Cannot connect to the FTD at all. Instead, the only thing available is the crappy old ASDM (7.13). Overpriced, outdated, and did not have any of the features it claimed to have. Called Cisco support, they won't even talk to you without a support contract.

If I could give it a lower star I would. The hardware is great. They rarely fail. If an internet line is down, it was never the Cisco device. They have moved to smart licensing that is a nightmare. 50% it works right way, 50% you have to call TAC and spend hours and hours working with them. It seems like they hire from the mentally disabled center, but I think those folks are smarter. You would think once you got past spending several days with support and have it up and running all your issues would be over. Think again. There is a decent chance they will randomly loose their licensing and perfectly working hardware will stop supporting encrypted connections. Have a VPN tunnel to a remote office, or a bunch of users using AnyConnect, they are shut out until you rinse and repeat the above process. In the unlikely event the hardware fails.... well good luck transfering the license over to the new device. I loved Cisco, swore by Cisco, drank the Cisco Kool-aid, but the IT labor costs to license/renew the license, is unbearable. Did not want to move from them, but customers would not pay the installation bill. I like my customers, but not enough I want to spend days beating my head against the wall with Cisco support for free.

Any new Cisco devices purchased from a NON Authorized reseller(WHICH AMAZON IS NOT), you cannot get support on these items from Cisco. they have stop supporting grey market items. I have tried to get amazon to add a maindatory statement when selling these items or remove them all together. You as the buyer can get stuck with a paper weight. I don't blame cisco in this case. One person was complaining about software, that too is not a Cisco issue that is a model they went to and you should have known that prior to purchasing a unit like this. Do i like it no, but that is what they are doing.