NETGEAR ProSAFE FVS318N 8-Port Wireless-N VPN Firewall with SSL and IPSec VPN (FVS318N-100NAS)

I need to start out by saying that I've been a Netgear fan for a really long time, having purchased several of their products in the past. But while Netgear used to make really solid products that worked well, they've fallen into the trap of making terrible products that can't stand up to even the most basic of usage scenarios.My love affair with Netgear began to fade shortly after purchasing several WNCE2001s and having them destroy my network. (You can read my review on those here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R39J7L56W455O7/) I chalked that up to them being an old and discontinued product, but it started to chip at my confidence in Netgear's products. Then came this thing, the FVS318N firewall.The firewall I had before this one was the FVS318G, and it was excellent - so much so that I immediately wanted something newer in the Netgear ProSafe line when it was time for me to replace it. And lo, I found the FVS318N and ordered it without hesitation.My first mistake.The firewall arrived, and I updated the firmware and re-entered my network configuration on the new device. (I should note here that I'm a full-time 15+ year IT security professional, so I know my way around firewalls and the like.) For the first day, the firewall worked great. The speeds were so much faster than I've been used to and it was a pleasure. But after the first 24 hours or so, the connection through the firewall became horribly unstable. 33% of connections began straight up failing due to random connection resets. I decided it was time to contact Netgear Support.My second mistake.I opened my support ticket on December 5, 2014. The first-level technician did some basic troubleshooting and had me downgrade the firewall's firmware to its factory state, then we upgraded to the penultimate firmware version to see if it was an issue with the latest firmware. Nothing helped, so the issue was "escalated" to engineering, who promptly came back and said that it was a DNS problem. A terrible diagnosis, as this kind of failure has nothing to do with DNS. (DNS doesn't interrupt existing connections, it serves to translate hostnames to IP addresses so that the initial connection can be made.) I followed their ridiculous recommendation and told them that wasn't the problem. They also asked me to spin up a syslog server and have the Firewall log to it, so I did that too.That was on December 17, and that's pretty much where this issue stalled. I re-upgraded the firmware to more reliably reproduce the problem, and continued logging to the syslog server. On the 18th, I uploaded the logs to Netgear's support portal after reproducing the issue. On the 19th it was again "escalated to next level support" which is where everything died on their end. I requested an update on the 23rd and didn't get a response. I requested another update on January 5, and got no response until January 13, when Netgear requested access to a host on my network. Actually what they asked for was a host running Wireshark and PuTTY, at which point I told them I don't have any Windows machines but that I could give them access to a Linux machine with tcpdump and ssh available, and I asked if that was acceptable. On January 30 they agreed, so I immediately provisioned a brand new virtual machine and gave them access as of February 1.That's where my ticket hit a brick wall. A week later (Feb 8) I updated the ticket saying that I hadn't gotten any response from Netgear and I needed an update because this firewall has crippled my network. I was told "Engineering is working on it" but the logs on the machine I gave them said otherwise. In fact, no one other than me had ever even logged into that box. Nobody in Netgear Engineering was paying attention to this issue at all.So here we are today. I have a completely unusable firewall, and the company that makes it has absolutely no interest in fixing it. Additionally, I'm not the only one with this problem - I provided them several links to places on the Netgear forums from people who are having the same issue. Google yields even more people with the problem, and it's been an issue since the firewall was first released.So yeah, no more Netgear for me. Ever. I would encourage you to stay away as well. They make terrible products and they have awful support standing behind their products. Don't waste your money or your time.

One of our software vendors required us to purchase this unit for their system. We got it hooked up and after about 15 minutes it started working. Updated the firmware, changed the SSID name, setup wireless security with a password and after about 20 minutes it was up and ready to go again. It quit a few minutes later. By the time I got on the phone with Netgear tech support and got thru to a live person... it started working again. A few hours later we lost power for a few seconds and it went out. Could not get it to work. Tried resetting power and it worked for about 5 minutes and went out. Got back on the phone with Netgear tech support and after about 2 hours we got it working again for about 10 minutes, then it went out. The unit would not reset. Netgear is replacing this unit. While the Netgear tech was on the phone, I disconnected their unit, hooked up our previous Linksys router and within 2 minutes we were up and running.UPDATE: Can I drop the 1 star to 0? We got the replacement unit in and connected on Monday 3/30/15. Contacted Netgear tech support to make sure we had everything setup properly. Every morning we come in to the office the Internet is down and we have to reboot the unit. It takes 10-15 minutes for it to connect. Today, it connected for 3 minutes and went back down... had to reboot again. 25-30 minutes to get online.

Then it conked out. Not my first rodeo - I have set up many wireless routers, this one was bought to replace an EnGenius router fried by a recent lightning strike. Overall the config/admin software accessed at 192.168.1.1 seemed slow to respond, the menu not that well set up. I downloaded the latest firmware and installed it but that too seemed a bit clunky. My Windows wired and wireless computers connected OK after several reboots and seemed to be working pretty well. But although an IOS iPad connected wirelessly OK, an IOS iPad Mini would not connect, nor would my Amazon Tap. I was still playing with those trying to solve the problems when everything just quit. Now not even the wired connected Windows computers would work with the network or internet through the FVS318N router, much less any of the wireless. I verified my cable modem was still OK by directly connecting this computer I am using to write the review to it and immediately started the return/refund process.I should have read the reviews first. At least I will eventually get my money back, but I have just wasted and waited for about a week of my time after the lightning strike to get this far...only to fail. No more NetGear. The EnGenius that was fried worked really well, I may try another but I wanted 8 hard-wired ports...

So after mulling the purchase and reading the previous reviews I decided to try it. It's being used in a second office that's used once a week so it's not as mission critical as most. Out of the box I did upgrade the firmware to 4.3.4 and then proceeded to the general setup. As previously mentioned in other reviews the firmware is slow and clunky, one would and should expect more from a professional/business router. Then again at this price point....The good: all Ethernet ports are opposite of the power switch/plug and antennas, so wall mounting is straight forward. After set up, wireless signal strength is great in the office. It's installed on the back wall of this office; and it's about 60 feet through multiple walls to the front. On multiple devices I was getting 5 bars signal. I thought I might have to add in a repeater but it won't be necessary. And finally - it's an 8 port router. Try to find that elsewere - especially at this price point.The bad: Its an older slower web interface. It really should be updated. It's nice that it has vpn support built into it but that just adds to the legacy of the software build. Would prefer they add in further https security etc, but again for the price point and capability I can't complain too much,Overall it's been installed for a week with no issues. I'll update in a few months.

Despite the bugs that never seem to be addressed, it's has the best quality/price of all consumer VPN routers (with WiFi) in the market (it's my opinion; still waiting to be corrected by anybody). It's also my 3rd.I also have several FVS318G (no WiFi).