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Denmark, Copenhagen
1 Level
757 Review
96 Karma

Review on Cisco RV120W VPN Firewall Router with Wireless-N, 4-Port Switch, and 802.11b/g/n Support by Ricky Snyder

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Works, with some serious flaws

The biggest problem with this device is the poor documentation. Although this is a long document, it doesn't say anything, it just replicates the user interface on the device. He doesn't explain further. The second problem is that it's just not finished yet. There are many small glitches and a few big ones. Only the first version of the firmware is currently available. You will probably want to wait for the next update. Don't think about it if you don't have any business networking experience. Don't expect to just plug it in and go. You have to go through many options and make sure they are set correctly. Based on other reviews, many other buyers are having issues because they don't know what many of the settings do and have no idea if they're set up correctly. Given the state of the documentation, it's not their fault. Main issues: The QuickVPN client (which you run on your laptops to connect via VPN) needs admin rights to work. From a security point of view, this is anti-security. Also, there's no diagnostics when QuickVPN won't connect, so you can't figure out if the problem was permissions, an incorrect password, an already-connected connection, an IPSEC-disabling middleware device, etc. You need to disable the UDP attack check Flood, which is enabled by default. This can block outgoing DNS requests, disrupt some websites, and stop the internal caching DNS server. remains disabled until you manually log into the RV120W and turn it back on. Of course, this has to be done on-site, where you may not have the staff to do it. Minor issues: QuickVPN doesn't give you a local IP address (like L2TP/PPTP), so you might have other problems since your network sees the external address. If you try to connect to device management via HTTP, you won't be redirected to HTTPS, but it won't work either. The admin interface is sluggish at best. Sometimes it seems that the processor is running at 100% utilization for no apparent reason. It will affect performance when this happens. The logs are obviously a mix of different pieces of software and don't share a common format, not even for date/time stamps, so they're not always sorted by time. I don't have remote logging yet. Magazines contain a lot of things you probably don't care about and don't contain things you probably need. Please note that there are many features that I have not used (including WiFi) but cannot comment on. All in all, I've decided to keep the device. I measured VPN throughput of 16 Mbps (using QuickVPN), which is enough for a maximum connection with the ISP. It is small and consumes little power. It has a bunch of firewall features that I need, some very good ones like packet sniffing, and in the end it's VERY time consuming to figure out how to set it up, it really works.

Pros
  • So far so good
Cons
  • Definitely a bad product