Category: (CE)
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Netgear Dual Wan Giga Firewall
Non-64 bit supportReviewed by J. Renz, 2010-02-16
Please be VERY warry of this product. It DOES NOT support 64 bit OS's. When talking with NetGear support, they were completely usless. They informed me that because their competitor "Cisco" does not support 64 bit OS's, they do not either. Here is a though NetGear, instead of being as BAD as your competitors, try being an industry leader instead of a follower. Additionally, your support department has a bad attitude.
Behind the curveReviewed by I. Wan, 2010-01-29
We setup the FVS336G in our small business late 2008.
It worked without any problems.
The main selling point for us, was the allegedly ease of the SSL
VPN.
It was indeed fairly easy and worked pretty well (if you're on
Vista/XP 32 bit).
As you're all aware, by that time, 64 bit computers were becoming
more and more prevalent and windows 7 was supposed to be released a
few months later (in 2009). Like other major hardware companies, I
was expecting Netgear to already be working on firmware updates for
compatibility issues.
But it's January 2010, and this product still doesn't support SSL
VPN for Windows 7.
It doesn't bode well for a company, such as Netgear, to be behind
the curve and not have the foresight to test this product for
Windows 7 (I'm assuming they would've had access, if they wanted,
to developer previews of Windows 7).
Customer service was also subpar. While fairly responsive (48 hours
to reply to my support tickets), their responses were mostly
useless.
While the product isn't that bad, my contractors can't VPN to the
office if they're using Windows 7, which was the main reason we
bought this specific product.
Solid small-mid business VPN routerReviewed by Conrad Yoder, 2009-04-11
I have used two of these for about 6 months now, and for the most
part I am very satisfied. I use them to tie two offices together
via full-time VPN tunnel, which is easy to set up, using the VPN
setup wizard. I am not using the 2nd WAN on either, but I may in
the future based on bandwidth needs. The (essentially unlimited)
SSL VPN is a great cost-saving measure - no need to buy individual
client licenses like with a SonicWALL. The SSL VPN works well with
Windows and OS X, and presumably Linux, although I haven't tried
it. The only caveat is that the SSL VPN is not currently compatible
with 64-bit Windows OSs, and Netgear hasn't said if they plan to
make it compatible. (Not sure why one of the reviewers was having
problems with Firefox - Firefox 3.0.8 connects well on both Win XP
and OS X 10.5 for me.) The initial configuration of the SSL VPN
gave me some grief, but through the Netgear forums and some trial
and error, I got it working (it seemed like there was some hidden
limit on the login page message which caused the VPN not to work,
if the message is too long?)
The phone tech support for the ProSafe line is pretty good. I was
having problems with one of the FVS336G's dropping the WAN
connection, and the latest beta firmware cleared up the problem. I
was able to install an SSL cert on one for tunnel access with a few
hitches (line endings seem to be an issue), but it is working well
now (previous firmwares made this feature all but useless, from
what I read on the discussion boards.) And Netgear has a very good
replacement policy, and next-day turn around if you buy that
service option.
So bottom line: a little on the tricky side to get set up,
depending on how many of the features you use, but after that it's
been working well. I would buy more.
Doesn't support 64-bit operating systemsReviewed by C. Russell, 2009-01-19
Normally, I'm a big fan of Netgear products. However, the FVS336G
did not work as advertised. The SSL VPN feature and IPSEC VPN
client software do NOT support 64-bit operating systems, and
according to Netgear tech support, there are currently no plans to
support it in the future. The only workaround offered was to
purchase SafeNet's IPSEC VPN client at $150 per user.
What a letdown... the primary feature that led us to purchase this
device (i.e. the SSL VPN) doesn't work for us. :-(
Lacks key featuresReviewed by Max Heffler, 2008-11-02
It was difficult to configure even with 8 hours of phone support and a unnecessary RMA. It lacks key features of a competitors product, like load balancing, web control via Firefox (a number of javascript break), DHCP list and Load balancing configuration while cable active. When Comcast reset line and modem/router connects, load balancing is no longer selectable and will no longer list DHCP addresses discovered or handed out.
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