I've been looking into a routers to facilitate a vpn solution for a small business. While the Netgear FVS336G looks good on paper, it appears to have some fairly crippling setbacks that drag down what appears to be some great hardware.
First off, the unit has been around for a couple years now, perhaps before 64-bit operating systems were as common as they are now, and complaints are everywhere that claim that SSL or IPsec (or both) VPN connections will not work with 64-bit operating systems. However, most of these claims mention only Vista, which makes me think that these problems could have potentially been solved since then.
Unfortunately though, Netgear's support forums seem to be incredibly private, and policed by some troll named jmizuguchi who just closes down public posts in order to marshal them into the private ones. Danger, will robinson.
Apparently their firmware upgrade process is a nightmare too, but that's beside the point.
My question is this: has anyone configured one a Netgear FVS336G to operate in a server 2008 (or R2)/windows 7 64-bit network? If so, is it possible to use the microsoft vpn client or are third party clients still required?
If this thing has just failed the test of time, is there a feature-comparable unit that I've missed, at anywhere near the same price range?
Thanks!
Quoting a NetOp, "nobody ever got fired for buying Cisco equipment"; because it works, it's widely supported, and an ASA5505 isn't that expensive (even for a small business).
I Second the the Cisco ASA5505 also look at the Juniper J2320. They are not that expensive at all when you look at the big picture. The netgear stuff is more of a lightwight "home office" product. It works most of the time but is a pain in the butt to configure and support is poor to say the least.
Although I'd agree with the higher quality Cisco equipment, if price is a big concern you could consider a software router such as Vyatta. It claims to allow for most (if not all) router features, including VPN, and even has a free version. It's a project I actually have coming up this week and next, so I can't really say much about it yet, but it's worth a look if you're still considering at all your options.
Old question, but to answer part of the OP's question, yes we've setup W2K8 and Win7 64 bit VPN with the FVS336G. HOWEVER, that setup was with the W2K8R2 acting as the VPN server with the appropriate ports forwarded in the router/firewall. We didn't even try to get the VPN working direct to the router.