Network Processing Cards (NPCs) provide network connectivity for a PA-7000 Series firewall. To scale performance and capacity, you can install up to six NPCs in a PA-7050 firewall and up to ten NPCs in a PA-7080 firewall. If you plan on fully populating a PA-7000 Series firewall with NPCs, see Determine PA-7000 Series Firewall Power Configuration Requirements to ensure that you provide enough power to the firewall.

When viewing the NPCs from the web interface, the NPCs are organized by slot and you click the icon to the left of the slot number to show the NPC ports. The port numbering designation is Ethernet, followed by slot/port such as ethernet<slot>/<port>, where slot is the physical slot the card is installed in and the port is the interface port number. For example, the first Ethernet port on an NPC installed in slot 1 shows ethernet1/1 and port 2 shows ethernet1/2. The first port on an NPC installed in slot 2 shows ethernet2/1 and port 2 shows ethernet2/2. For information on installing the NPCs, see Replace a PA-7000 Series Network Processing Card (NPC).

On the PA-7050 firewall, you install NPCs in slots 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 and on the PA-7080 firewall, you install NPCs in slots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.

The following NPCs can be installed in a PA-7000 Series firewall: