An Old Standby Reborn: NETGEAR FVS318G Reviewed

[thiggins]

Has the the FVS318G been discontinued? It doesn't seem to show up under of any of Netgear's "Product" pages. Searching for FVS318G on the Netgear site gives a hit for what seems to be the product page but that page doesn't seem to exist anymore. It was there 2-3 weeks ago. The link now just takes you to the Netgear home page.

Could be a website glitch. Plenty of 'em available on Amazon, NewEgg, etc.

If your router is fast enough for your Internet connection, adding a Gigabit switch is an easy and cheap way to go. There's no advantage to getting a router with Gigabit ports built in. In fact, for reliability, it's a good idea to keep the switch (and its heat) out of the router.

Gigabit traffic will flow port to port just fine on the switch.

 

[VAPike]

Still there - but cunningly disguised!

Thanks for the notes confirming my choice! I've added the gigabit LAN capacity I need for $38 with the GS105 instead of $132.

There are definitely website glitches. The FVS318, FVS318G and FVS336G pages and the Wired VPN Firewalls page are all showing an image of the FVG318. The image URL gives it away http://www.netgear.com/images/fvg318_productimage_large18-5263.png.

Somebody probably got confused with all the similar model nos! The FVS318G was quite possibly there when I looked the other day and I skipped over what appeared to be a wireless device!

 

[Unregistered]

Is Supplied VPN Software Windows 7 (64bit) compatible?

Doesn't anyone that has this router know? I feel like I've seen comments online that indicate that the software DOES NOT work on Windows 7, but I'm not sure if the posters are confusing this product with the older "non g" variants. Can anyone who has this comment?

Thanks.

 

[roognation]

Thanks for posting the review.

You might look at the Cisco RV042 and if you need more ports the RV082. Both are entirely different designs than the RVS4000.

ZyXELs are also decent, although not as prevalent as the Ciscos.

Many people like Drayteks. They're more popular outside the US.

It's been a number of months since this recommendation came out; thought I would give it a bump of sorts. I have been using the FVS318 (older version) with many clients and been generally happy. I was hoping to upgrade to this FVS318G unit, but the reviews online have been terrible. The feature set and technical specs seemed like a great mix for a small business or home office, but measured performance was much less than quoted...sad

So, there are two questions:
1...has Netgear fixed the hardware/firmware issues; anyone review/test yet?
2...Is there a good replacement that has surfaced since the above notes were made?

Thx!

 

[roognation]

Bump...

Short Bump...

 

[Unregistered]

It's been a number of months since this recommendation came out; thought I would give it a bump of sorts. I have been using the FVS318 (older version) with many clients and been generally happy. I was hoping to upgrade to this FVS318G unit, but the reviews online have been terrible. The feature set and technical specs seemed like a great mix for a small business or home office, but measured performance was much less than quoted...sad

So, there are two questions:
1...has Netgear fixed the hardware/firmware issues; anyone review/test yet?
2...Is there a good replacement that has surfaced since the above notes were made?

Thx!

I have had the FVS318G in use for over a week with no problems whatsoever. Even got to connect it via VPN to a iphone and a mac with IPSecuritas. I updated the firmware before putting into production. It is highly recommended to reset the rooter to the default settings before upgrading. Current firmware is 3.0.7.22.

Hope this dissipates some of the bad reviews the FVS318G is getting.

 

[WyattBellis]

iPhone VPN

Hi there,

How did you get the iphone to connect via VPN. I see a few people have done it, and the majority of people cannot get it to work.

Do you have a config document that can help?

Thanks

Wyatt

 

[bosscrab]

FVS318G: Buyer Beware, DHCP Reservation Does Not Work

I have a Netgear FVS318G running the latest firmware (3.0.8-12).

The DHCP reservation feature does not work correctly. From reading the Netgear support forums it appears that this has been an ongoing issue with this router.

If you need to reserve LAN IP's for basic things like...oh, say...port forwarding, then this router will not work for you. You can employ a workaround with static IP's, but that's just more work for the user. And DHCP reservation works fine on even the most basic consumer grade routers.

Otherwise it seems pretty stable and the 8 gigabit ports are nice to have.

But I would never install this in my home or a small business if I had another choice.