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Netgear ProSafe FVS338 VPN/Firewall

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6 User Reviews

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• Reviewed by: softbear

  Updated: 07-09-08

  Overall Rating: 5 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:

  Strengths: FAST, Stable, Reliable, Low Power

  Weaknesses: Still not what you could call Intuitive Setup

  Overall Evaluation: I recently upgraded to a 30 Mbps broadband connection, and found I had finally outpaced my Pentium-class Linux Gateway/Firewall that was drawing as much as 100 watts. Additionally, the low end switches I was connecting through had a nasty habit of dropping out irregularly. This unit is overkill for my current uses (rated throughput: "LAN-to-WAN: up to 75 Mbps. 3DES IPsec tunnel: Up to 19 Mbps"), while drawing a mere 12 watts of power. It also offers a roll-over to an external modem; useless for those of us on VoIP. While it is still true that some of the Firewall features have a noticeable impact on performance, the current firmware has improved significantly over what earlier reviews indicate, and with careful planning and testing it is barely noticeable in my environment. [The unit is currently running a 2.6.1x Linux Kernel with a variety of patches. Source is available for those who must...] In just over a month, I've yet to have a single hangup or dropout traceable to this product while handling over 250 Megabytes of traffic on an average day; wish I could say as much for the Microsoft Windows systems it tries to protect. YMMV: check the specifications carefully, this unit may not suit your environment.

• Reviewed by: ccmgtech

  Updated: 11-02-07

  Overall Rating: 5 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:3 Years

  Strengths: Intuitive setup screens, good online help, many advanced features for VPN connectivity, port forwarding, static routes, etc.

  Weaknesses: Standard tech support is pretty bad. However, if you ask to be sent to 2nd level support they usually put you through to someone who knows what they are doing.

  Overall Evaluation: We have been using Netgear routers for about five years and have been very pleased. We have about 20 of the FVS338's deployed doing point to point VPN tunnels, connecting buildings together, doing WAN's, etc. and they are working very well. The first thing you should do is upgrade the firmware since the firmware that comes with the unit is usually at least one rev old. (this is true of almost every router, though regardless of who makes it). Otherwise, you are good to go.

• Reviewed by:

  Updated: 01-09-07

  Overall Rating: 4 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:2 Months

  Strengths: 90Mbps LAN WAN speed. Hub and spoke or point to point VPN works with FVS338's and the older FVS318's (which is what i needed to accomplish) Firewall rules for both inbound and outbound traffic.

  Weaknesses: 1.x firmware on my unit was unfit for use. Had to upgrade to 2.0 before things started to work. (newer models may come with 2.x or newer).

  Overall Evaluation: Some other routers were too slow for my internet connection (FiOS). This one allwos for an easy hub & spoke VPN configuration. Netgear telephone support is useless. Best bet is to use the forms and request the beta firmwares if something doesn't work as expected. Blocking chatty outbound traffic is great. Before this i had to use a linux box to block the chatty windows machines. With the FVS338, i can apply outbound firewall rules without the need to keep another machine running.

• Reviewed by: wildcat50k

  Updated: 01-02-07

  Overall Rating: 4 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:2 Years

  Strengths:

  Weaknesses:

  Overall Evaluation: I have installed 2 of these for a router-based site-to-site VPN connection for a client, and while the learning curve was a little hairy with IPSec policies, encryption algorithms, etc, once it was configured, it has been very stable.I have another client using 1 of these in front of a Windows SBS network and has worked very consistently (once firmware was updated and configured).While I agree that Netgear's tech support sucks most of the time, if you know what you are doing with firewall router configurations, port forwarding, QoS, etc, then Netgear offers alot of bang for the buck as far as features/ functions.

• Reviewed by:

  Updated: 10-07-06

  Overall Rating: 1 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:4 Days

  Strengths: VPN End Point....I think

  Weaknesses: Buggy user interface

  Overall Evaluation: Purchased two of these units to VPN between my home and office. My old VPN from Netgear got zapped during a lightning storm.Surprised at how the quality of Netgear has deteriorated. I could not get the Group and Hosts function to work. Any name I used for a reserved DHCP address always got reset to Unkown. I called tech support and they were clueless. The person (probably in India) had to keep running to someone elses computer to look up stuff. After 1 hour we had not made any progress. He told me someone would call back in an hour. 3 hours later and no call.When I googled this issue, I discovered that there were lots of people complaining about bugs on this model VPN. I plan on returning the unit. Stay away from it unless you want to spend hours trying to figure out if you configured the unit incorrectly or if the unit has bugs.

• Reviewed by: chillexistence

  Updated: 07-18-06

  Overall Rating: 1 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:1 Days

  Strengths: NONE

  Weaknesses: Keyword Blocking does not funciton correctly and just cripples the unit.

  Overall Evaluation: This unit is a piece of crap, its the 2nd one I've had the first one didn't work out of the box, didn't have any firmware even loaded on the unit... Unit would go into funk mode where I couldn't access the internet or the admin control panel and when I tried to ping the unit it would take up to like 600ms for a response..... When "Keyword Blocking" is enable the lan/wan throughput is only 294kbps but I have a 15MB connection (15307kbps).... It basically renders using the internet impossible and useless! This unit has major flaws, read else where that the modem portion doesn't work correctly! Stay far far away from this unit... the FVS318 is nice, it can only do about 5MB lan/wan throughput when "Keyword Blocking" is enabled (with the table maxed up)... Apparently Tech Support is just as unsmart as the average JOE and says that they know their "units" don't function correctly to the specifications of the features that its suppose to support!

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