Home > Consumer Reviews > NETGEAR FVS114 ProSafe VPN Firewall 8 with 4-Port 10/100 Mbps Switch

Installed at a client to build tunnel from his home to his office ( to connect to Linksys R0V81 VPN router.) Was very easy to configure and very stable in operation. I am going to buy more for other clients too. Highly recommended.

Though I feel that this vpn firewall has alot of great features for its price range, the underlying issue with my internet connection constantly dropping made this a bad buy. I had purchased this vpn firewall to work together with my linksys wireless router (this can be easily done by disabling the DHCP on the wireless router) so that I would have a strong firewall denying untrusted external requests. The issue I ran into within the first day was that I constantly had internet connection drops (very frustrating). Would have to power down all my equipment to get it back up. Called tech support at Netgear and was walked through changing the IP address of the FVS114 to something different - technician suspected that it maybe conflicting with the IP address of my ADSL modem. Tech also advised me to create a backup of the setting (.cfg file) and manually reboot the firewall and restore the .cfg file to the vpn firewall if the issue recurred. After experiencing the whole issue again I finally decided to just return it back to the store.

Update June 2009:

I found Netgear has a new release firmware 1.1_15 on their support site. Upgrade firmware is smooth, all configuration kept. After that, all the problems are gone. It runs very stable, even with serveral people beating it really hard with a lot of traffic through it.

Under the firewall log, I can see a lot of hackers trying to scan my IP address/ports and being dropped :-)

With the VPN, we can have filesharing, printer sharing, VOIP all through this little box and working great. If you have branch offices of few people and like to setup VPN between them, this is a box worth to look at it, especially with such a low price now.

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I brought two of this router. Made them a VPN between the office and home. The one in the office has no problem, runs for couple weeks never need to reboot. The one at home always need reboot, once kids get home and started their X-Box360 online games -- every 20 minutes to two hours.

I contacted Netgear support, reported the problem. They provided me a beta firmware, version 1114, which keeps the router running for a week and have no reboot any more.

Another thing that the user guide did not meantion is that you don't have to run the wizard software from CD, just use browser points to
[...]
you will be able to configure this VPN router.

Don't return the routers back to Amazon, Netgear support can help you get the problems gone! I am very happy with them once the new firmware updated!

This is the second FVS114 that I've purchased; the first one has been running solid for at least a year. I purchased a second one to create a 'safe' zone for my wireless networks (on the inside of one firewall and outside of the other). I now have a 'protected' zone inside the second FVS114 firewall. The WAN exposed FVS114 is connected to two 4-port switches and a total of 7 devices (not counting the switches).

The FVS114 handles VoIP, Xbox Live, wireless network connectivity and everyday Internet traffic without incident. And since its an SPI firewall, it affords a higher level of protection than NAT devices.

I've only had the second FVS114 for a few weeks, but expect my second FVS114 to provide the same excellent level of uptime service that my first one has for over a year. And since Netgear ProSafe products have a lifetime warranty (for products purchased after May 1, 2007), I have no worries about replacing my FVS114 should it malfunction.

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After operating my new FVS114 for about 4 months, I find myself agreeing with many of the negative reviews about this unit having problems. I have two of these firewalls and the first one was manufactured in Taiwan; the newer one was manufactured in China. I think there are quality or perhaps other differences in the two firewalls. The Taiwan manufactured unit is solid; but the one manufactured in China is not.

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I have another observation about the firmware issue; after 'upgrading' my first (Taiwan manufactured) FVS114 to version 1.1-01 as recommended in several reviews, it developed dropout problems. I re-installed the original version 1.0 firmware that provided solid uptime availability for years and the unit went back to being solid.

I also installed the 1.0 version on my second (China manufactured) FVS114 and it has been solid since the downgrade; it had occasional dropouts with version 1.1_01.

The original version is 1.0_07 and is available on the Netgear website.

I have 4 of these, one has been running for several years. No problems at all. These front our Internet connection, and we do not use them as switches, just firewalls. That means we have the Internet connection plugged into one port, and a switch plugged into another port. The computers, printers, etc. are plugged into the the switches, not this unit. The router sits between these units and the Internet. (The reason we use so many of them is that we sublet our office space: each tenant gets their own firewall so that no one can bust into the other tenant's network.)

I R ----Firewall1----Switch1---Computers/printers
N O
T U----Firewall2----Switch2---Computers/printers
E-T
R E----Firewall3----Switch3---Computers/printers
N R
E
T

We've never had any problems with them, and so, at least as firewalls, they do the job. Switches are cheap: just buy a netgear 16 port switch and put it behind these. They worked fine for us, without any firmware upgrades or anything. We just take them out of the box, set them up as DHCP servers and leave the firewall protection at the default and we've never had a single problem with any of the 4 of them we own.

If people are having problems, I suspect the switch capabilities could be the issue.

UPDATE: 3/2009. The problem others are having is the firmware. We are using down level firmware, which works fine. The newer firmware is TERRIBLE and they lock up ALL THE TIME. My understanding is that they have even newer firmware that is better. I downgraded all of mine to release 1 and have had no problems.