NETGEAR FVS336G Reviewed: VPN Your Way

[raleighthings]

I have an old aging Netopia 9100 that I need to retire for various reasons. Plus We want to have dual WAN access.

What we have/want.

Cable 2/2mpbs and DSL 3/.384mbps down/up speeds.

Mail and FTP servers plus a few other inbound initiated items like remote control on the cable link . Everything else (mainly surfing) on the DSL link.

Both cable and DSL have a /28 block of static IPs. Cable we get to see 13 of them. With DSL we get the full 16 plus one more for the router.

Mail and FTP servers are setup using WAN IP addresses. Say 209.209.209.209. Rest of assignments are of the 192.168.99.x NAT variety. Plus the servers also have 192.168.99.x IP addresses.

As best I can tell the FVS336G will let me do all of the above without mapping the external WAN addresses to internal 192... NAT addresses. (Doing NAT mapping causes some headaches for some of the software we use.)

I'd also be able to manually switch the servers to the DSL WAN via a configuration change if needed. Or the NAT to the cable WAN if needed.

And I could without a huge expense have a 2nd one sitting around for when lightning blows out the "live" one.

Anyone see a reason this would not work with this router? I've already figured out that most routers with a dedicated DMZ will let me do this but only if I put the servers only on the DMZ port or add a 2nd NIC to the servers so they can exist on the DMZ and the non DMZ LAN. With this unit it appears all could exist on the same LAN.

Thanks

[raleighthings]

Hmmm.

Should I have put this in the "Routers" topic?

[thiggins]

Originally Posted by raleighthings

Hmmm.

Should I have put this in the "Routers" topic?

I have asked Doug Reid to respond to you post. Please be patient.

[raleighthings]

Originally Posted by thiggins

I have asked Doug Reid to respond to you post. Please be patient.

OK. I'm just new around here and not sure of what all goes where. Still learning.

Thanks

[Dan70]

Originally Posted by raleighthings

I have an old aging Netopia 9100 that I need to retire for various reasons. Plus We want to have dual WAN access.

What we have/want.

Cable 2/2mpbs and DSL 3/.384mbps down/up speeds.
......
Thanks

I own a FVS336G since June 2008, and I'm kinda' dissapointed.
It hangs once or twice a month, the log vanishes and the clock restarts to 00:00 1st January 1970 after a power failure or a soft restart, and the tech support needs improvement.
Also, the throughput performance is stated 60 Mbps LAN to WAN, but in fact this is also the limit for WAN to LAN. (I have a fiber to the building connection with 100Mbps metropolitan speed and I cannot fully use it). When I asked them, they claimed that LAN to WAN is the same as WAN to LAN in their opinion.

They want to charge you for premium support for assisting in some advanced configurations of features their product claims to have (of course, config details are not in the manual).

My advice: check with tech support (pre-sales) in your country and ask them to confirm that FVS336 really does what you need, before buying it.

It has some fancy stuff, like the SSL portal (in which you don't need a VPN client to connect remotely - it does that with only a Web browser), but check before you buy it...

If you need the user manual, just ask.

Best regards,
Daniel

[raleighthings]

Originally Posted by thiggins

I have asked Doug Reid to respond to you post. Please be patient.

Is Doug around?

TIA

since the original review for this was written, several firmware updates have been made available from netgear. i'm wondering if the issue of dropping the vpn tunnel due to the ISP changing the wan ip address has been resolved?

thanks!

[thiggins]

Don't know. You could check the release notes.

[christianmoche]

yeah the realese notes should answer all your questions.

I purchased a FVS336G to try it out, and I too must say it's a disappointment.

When my brand new FVS336G arrived from Amazon, I noticed it was six versions of firmware behind, an indication that sales must indeed be slow. So, upgraded it to firmware version 3.0.4-19

The documentation and help seem to be from some other router, and hasn't been fully updated for the FVS336G, and even contains errors that confuse the first time installer. The errors seem to arise from them cutting & pasting sections describing inbound & outbound rules.

The configuration software on the router itself is fraught with inconsistencies & bugs. Before you can change a setting in a particular rule, you might have to plod through several other windows to disable the rule. Or, in some cases, you make a change, and it appears to take the change, but you go back and check and the setting has reverted to the older one.

The router is unable to implement at least several of its advertised functions, such as, when in Load Balancing mode, they say you can direct all of a selected type of traffic to only go through one WAN or the other. Here's from their documentation p2-12:

Note: Scenarios could arise when load balancing needs to be bypassed for certain
traffic or applications. If certain traffic needs to travel on a specific WAN
interface, configure protocol binding rules for that WAN interface. The rule
should match the desired traffic.

It doesn't work. You can configure protocol rules all day long and the traffic still goes where it likes. I called their tech support (international long-distance), but they didn't want to talk to me until I registered with them. I didn't have time to drive back to the office and crawl back into the router closet to get the serial number etc. so I was unable to get help - says Olga 5670 at NetGear.

Further, the default service rules are vague. For instance, there's an HTTP service rule. Does that refer to lan-user traffic, or a webserver you might have on your network? There's no way to find out exactly what the rule refers to.

Firewall logs are primitive too. For instance, you can't get a log of what's going through WAN1 or WAN2, only both combined.

Since various functions don't work. You begin to wonder if the disable-rule-checkboxes are working, and start deleting rules and adding them back in, trying to debug the various problems.

Since the basic functios didn't work. I didn't get around to trying its VPN capabilities. When I do get back to my router closet next week, it will be to replace it, not get its serial number for tech support. It's just another time-wasting product I don't have time for, especially if I can't get five minutes with their tech, after jumping through all their telephone extension hoops to find I have to go to the office for a serial number.

If all you need is a cheap basic load-balancing router, it sorta works. Of course if all you want to do is combine two networks, you don't need a dual wan router to do it.

If you need anything more than that, well, the FVS336G is still a work in progress, and I don't think they're spending much R&D on it.