Not so long ago, you were lucky to have broadband of any speed. Now broadband is getting faster with speeds of 8-10Mbps becoming more common and 24Mbps not so far away. As a result, the current generation of routers for the home or small office are starting to show a weakness - they only have a 10Mbit WAN port for connecting to your ADSL or Cable connection.
The Netgear FVS114 manages to bring a 10/100 Mbps WAN port equipped router to the party with a whole bunch of extra features. As the box proudly proclaims, it combines 8 VPN tunnels, a router, 4 port switch and SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) Firewall in to one compact device in the familiar dark blue metal case that Netgear are famous for. With support for 253 users, there's
a lot of power here for the price.
What's in the box
As well as the Netgear FVS114 itself, you get a driver CD, a short network cable and an external PSU. Installation can be done via a wizard or manually. I opted for the wizard to see how well it would do. First of all, the external WAN device (in this case a cable modem running at 10Mbps) was connected then three PCs and a wireless access point were connected to the 4 10/100Mbps ports. With everything powered up, the wizard was started and proceeded to do its thing. A few minutes later I was up and running. A good start.
Features
Configuration is done via the web based interface. Given the price, I wasn't expecting too much but all the expected options were there including port mapping (the ability send certain types of data to a specific PC - useful for games, web servers etc.), dmz (a nominated PC that is open to the outside world - unsafe for that PC but useful for certain situations where port mapping doesn't work) and of course VPN (Virtual Private Network - the ability to log in to your PCs from another place). In many ways, it offers more options than my olf router which cost almost £300 only a couple of years ago.
The supplied manual was the usual pamphlet and whilst the CD had documentation for the optional VPN client, there was nothing much for the FVS114 itself. The configuration screen had a link to the online help page at Netgear but that just returned a page with 'coming soon' on it. A quick search on Netgear's site did find the full manual in PDF format which was duly downloaded. Having finally tracked it down, I can report it's a good manual with everything you need to know.
Teething Problems
One odd problem I encountered was that during the first few days of testing, it kept losing the external WAN link. It seemed like it wasn't renewing the lease on the connection automatically. In addition, I had a couple of lock ups which needed power cycling to revive it. I put a call in to Netgear who responded in a couple of days but by then it had stabilised and since then (6 months+) performed flawlessly even when worked hard by multiple high speed connections both on the LAN side and out to the WAN.
Additional Features
You can select various logging options including different types of external attack, which websites have been accessed, logins and so on. You can also arrange to be emailed if certain types of event occur, a nice touch. You can enable keyword blocking of web sites but there's no built in list of sites to start you off or option to subscribe to an external list. You can also block Java, ActiveX and so on. There is a comprehensive list of services you can use for setting up NAT based port mapping and you can add new services as required. The FVS114 will also automatically retrieve the time from its built in list of time servers or you can add up to two of your own. There's plenty here to keep your kids under control if you need to!
The VPN options are comprehensive with several screen devoted to their configuration. You can get the router to automatically update a number of the more common dynamic DNS services such as dynsnd.org. If you don't want to use dynamic IP allocation, you can also program in fixed addresses according to MAC address (the unique codes every network device has). You can mix and match between fixed and dynamic if required. Finally, you can select if the device will respond to ping (a way to tell if the router is working) requests or not.
All this configuration data can be saved to an external file for safety and the FVS114 is firmware upgradeable. If this device is anything like other Netgear equipement I have had, I'd expect at least one or two upgrades over time.
Summary
For a mere £44 or so, the Netgear FVS114 has a lot going for it. There's a lot of functionality packed in to its compact size (it fits in the palm of your hand) and in my specific tests it performed well, initial teething problem notwithstanding. If you want a good quality router with VPN, a decent firewall and enough options to keep anyone happy, you should look out for the FVS114. If only they did an 8 port version for a few quid more..
by (100%):
13.02.2007 14:48
Good review, sounds great.......Tryst
13.02.2007 14:46
Really interesting Review - my experience of netgear routers is a little different - I tried and failed to install one - it then took my IT consultant about an hour to sort it out...Rich
13.02.2007 14:46
Really interesting Review - my experience of netgear routers is a little different - I tried and failed to install one - it then took my IT consultant about an hour to sort it out...Rich