The Netgear ProSafe FWAG114 represents the old-school Netgear—even down to the metal chassis. This VPN firewall is a solid performer with an intuitive interface. And the FWAG114 was the only 802.11a/g product in our roundup that didn't present a single hiccup during setup.

Initial Configuration and Documentation

Although the FWAG114 lacks a wizard-assisted installation application, getting it started is still simple using the browser-based interface. The PC Card's installation application runs off the CD and leaves you with an intuitive and feature-rich client utility installed on your PC.

Management and Features

We like Netgear's main configuration interface, mostly because of its clean design and comprehensive help frame on the right-hand side of the browser window—an appealing feature that does not require you to pull up the help menu constantly when doing advanced configuration tasks. The menu structure is also well laid out, intuitive, and responsive. We were also pleased with the number of additional features, including DoS attack prevention and intrusion detection.

Security

Not only does the FWAG114 offer a highly configurable SPI firewall and schedulable filtering, but it's also one of only two products in this story to include a VPN server (the other is the ZyXEL Prestige 334W). It supports two IPsec VPN tunnels, which is especially helpful for a branch-office configuration.

Performance