NETGEAR FVS124G ProSafe Gigabit VPN Firewall 25 by Netgear
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Digital camera reviews of NETGEAR FVS124G ProSafe Gigabit VPN Firewall 25
Digital camera Review: Doesn't obey!
Summary: 1 Stars
I have battled with this hardware for about a year now. It has the buggiest firmware I have ever seen and there have been numerous upgrades correcting major issues. I am on the latest firmware which is 1.1.38 at the time this was written.
Checkout the bugfix list for this product:
[...]
I would argue that some of these have not been fixed.
I have 2 DSL lines, and it is connected to their 24port gigabit swithch. I bought this primarily for QoS for our Packet8 VOIP phones. It doesn't obey the mode rules to bind traffic for certain services to use certain wan ports, while load balancing is enabled. What does this mean? It means your VOIP will SOMETIMES work and users have trouble using https since the wan port you are using can change mid session. I bound all traffic to and from my server to one Wan port and it uses the other.
Support costs $40/per issue or $100+/year and they are in India so the latency when talking to them causes you to end up talking over each other constantly and they never believe the problem is their hardware.
I am open to the possibility that I am not doing something correctly, but if I can't figure it out with all the hours I've spent on the thing then I doubt others would have as much success.
--update: I have since moved to the peplink brand of routers... they seem to specialize in load balancing and it seems to be working well, but I am still figuring out a slow speed issue that may or may not be related.
The FVS124G apparantly works great in single connection mode... just don't try load-balancing. It's not even worth it for me to sell this thing on eBay, because they are so devalued now.
Digital camera Review: Dual WAN/VPN Problems
Summary: 2 Stars
The Firewall seems to perform well when only a single WAN port is used. However, when 2 WANs are used in Load-Balancing mode with proper protocol bindings, the VPN sporadically quits. This usually requires a factory reset to remedy.Digital camera Review: FVS124G Router does not work
Summary: 1 Stars
The FVS124G router has multiple problems and does not work well. It does not meet many of its advertised features and performance and crashes often. The situation has been known by Netgear for over six months with no solution. Negear is unresponsive in corporate customer support for this problem and it is unlikely to be resolved. I had to purchase a different similar router from a differnent company. Netgear is unresponsive to provide refunds for this defective product.Digital camera Review: FVS124G, Great VPN features, make sure you READ the specs
Summary: 3 Stars
Overall, the FVS124G Firewall/VPN Router is packed with great features; it has a 10/100/1000 4-port Gigabit switch, and dual WAN to boot. The VPN functionality is leaps and bounds ahead of Linksys' proprietary Quick VPN trash, so that alone makes this router a good buy if you're simply going for the VPN/IPSec functionality. The FVS124G is very reliable once you update to the latest firmware (v1.1.48), don't bother using this firewall/router until you update. Same applies to ANY router/firewall, not just Netgear.
Importantly, READ the specs for this router on Netgear's website BEFORE you buy -- WAN to LAN bandwidth maximum throughput is 11.5 mbps. If you are using Verizon FIOS, 11.5 mbps is less than half the bandwidth of what you'll receive over that circuit. Most cable companies are also providing 15-20 mbps download speeds now, so the FVS124G's bandwidth limitations will certainly be apparent in these situations. Internally, the FVS124G does the job, it provides 800mbps+ of internal LAN bandwidth, so it lives up to its Gigabit switching capabilities.
If you don't mind the 11.5mbps bandwidth maximum for your WAN/Internet connection, this router is a great buy, and the ease of setup, reliability, and Netgear support make it well worth the price for a home or small business. Due to the 11.5 mbps limitation, this router loses 2 stars. It's a 5-star product if it could support today's faster broadband connections...
Digital camera Review: Firmware not up to snuff
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased this router as an upgrade to a Linksys RV042 because I needed the QoS feature for VoIP.
Unfortunately it seems that there are significant problems with the firmware which cause the router to lockup for unknown reasons in a variety of configurations.
There is a long thread on this issue in the public Netgear support forums, and while Netgear is aware of the issue there seems to be no ETA for a fix. As of the time of this writing, the latest firmware is 1.1.21 (beta) and it does not fix this issue.
I am hoping that Netgear can clear this problem up. When the router was up and running it seemed to work just fine. If you don't need QoS, I'd recommend the Linksys RV042. If you do need QoS, hold off on this one until the firmware issues have been fixed. Make sure to check out the Netgear support forums first. If you can't wait, have a look at the Xincom Dual-Wan routers.. the DPG503 is the most similar in features.