Product Tour

Although named a "VPN firewall," the FVS114 is actually a fairly traditional router enhanced with VPN capabilities. If fact, as you'll notice from some of the screen images used in this article, the FVS114 management interface is very similar to what you'll find in NETGEAR's routers targeted at home consumers. However, the FVS114 is housed in a blue metal box, a design that NETGEAR generally uses for its business-class products.

The front panel of the FVS114 contains LED indicators for Power, Test, Link/Act for each of the four ports, and a 100 LED for each port that is lit when a 100 Mbps connection is made on the associated port. I was surprised that there wasn't a VPN Status LED; some routers with VPN capabilities have a VPN Status LED so that you can tell at a glance if a session is active.

The rear panel of the FVS114, shown in Figure 1, contains the port connections, DC Power input, and Reset button.

Figure 1: FVS114 Rear

The FVS114 cover is held in place by a single screw. A peek inside the FVS114 reveals (Figure 2) that the FVS114 is powered by a Realtek 8650B 200 Mhz RISC-based network controller, 2 MB of Flash, and 16 MB of SDRAM.

Figure 2: FVS114 Interior

Tags: IPsec, Netgear, Router reviews, VPN,

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