Netgear FVL328 Cable/DSL ProSafe High-Speed VPN Firewall Router

This is sold at a premium price and should be a premium product. It is NOT; it is high priced junk that should not have gotten past their Quality Department into the market.

The first unit lasted 3 weeks on a network of 4 users with a DSL rated @ 384 Kbps.

The tech service people refused to believe their unit could be at fault and blamed it on the ISP. I replaced this $450 router with a $50 one and all worked fine.

After a 2 hour wait for a Level 2 tech, I was issued a replacement unit. This unit, with serial # 4952, replaced one with a 125 serial # so I assumed the bug had been resolved. This unit died after 35 minutes of use.

I then called Netgear Tech Service people again and waited 2.5 hours for a Level 2 Technician. A recording came on telling me that they were too busy (after I waited for them for 2.5 hours) and told me to call at a later date and disconnected me.

I fired off a short letter to Netgear's Technical VP and CEO - which created a response. They...Read more

I own this product for about a year now and it has worked OK for 7 users connected and sharing a DSL Connection.

Netgear Support absolutely sucks, especially after 90 days of ownership. All they do is direct you to their premium phone support or to free email support which in turn directs you to their premium phone support. For top notch support go with linksys.

The Dynamic DNS they offer through works for short period and then generates DNS query error, good luck solving that. I would say that the firewall and security settings are a bit better then the $50-$90 dollar units.

To use the router as a VPN server for remote users, you need Netgears Client software. Windows VPN connection does not work, since it requares L2TP or PPTP termination which this router does not support. I think it will pass through those connections in which case you need a seperate VPN server like Windows 2000 Server edition OS.

If you decide to go with this router, please make sure you are ready to...Read more

I purchased an FVL328 over a year ago and it has been working 24x7 without any problems. This unit is not for the home "computer expert" as you have to have a clue on setting rules etc.

I am using latest V2.06 firmware and have been successful running MS VPN via passthrough mode to terminate in MS ISA2000 firewall and using syslog into secure lan and running 7 Ip addresses on external (DSL) interface.

The unit is good for supporting my 1000/256 dsl connection which
services an SBS2000 server, 2 Win2000 servers and 10 workstations.

Anyone wanting to run a PS2 will find that SONY's security implementation is a pain in the a@#$se so the only way is to use the DMZ option in the WAN interface settings.

The logs clearly indentify type of traffic in/outbound and rules/filtering works well. The FVL328 does suffer if you chose to open large ranges of ports but those trying should have their heads read.

Overall a cost...Read more