SmallNetBuilder

Installation and Feature Tour

Installation and basic configuration of the FVS114 for Internet connection is quite straightforward. An illustrated Installation Guide is included to guide you through the cabling of your computer, the FVS114, and your broadband modem. The accompanying resource CD contains the PDF versions of the Installation Guide and other documentation along with a link to the FVS114 home page.

The first time you access the FVS114, the Internet configuration wizard runs by default. It takes you through configuring your Internet connection and confirms that you're connected.

Thereafter, the wizard doesn't run again, but you can always connect to the firewall to change its settings. Rather than force you to type in the router's IP address, NETGEAR supplies a DNS entry for the router's home page, http://www.routerlogin.net. That URL will always take you to the home page of the FVS114. NETGEAR also notes that advanced users can bypass the wizard by typing http://www.routerlogin.net/basicsetting.htm and filling in admin as the user name and password as the password.

The management interface makes generous use of frames and scrollable text boxes. Menu functions (links to setting screens) are grouped vertically in the leftmost column under the main section headings of Setup, Security, VPN, Maintenance, Advanced and Web Support.

NETGEAR reserves the center column for displaying the configuration and setting screens. Netgear sometimes gets a little carried away with frames. On some screens, such as the Logs screen, there are actually four scrolling windows! The right column of the management interface shows the context-sensitive Help pages.

Figure 3 below shows the Basic Settings screen, which enables you to configure and check the status of your FVS114.

Figure 3: Basic Setting

The FVS114 features an SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) firewall. By default, the firewall automatically blocks the TCP and UDP floods, which are usually DoS (Denial of Service) attacks, and the non-standard packets, which could be used by hackers and in DoS attacks. Optionally, you can also choose to discard fragmented packets.

Note: On the FVS114, NETGEAR uses terms that are more likely to be understood by network administrators rather than consumers. For example, the term, "port forwarding," will not appear anywhere on the FVS114; instead, what you will find are "rules."

Figure 4 below shows the Rules screen, which enables you to see the existing firewall rules or create new ones to block or allow specific traffic.

Figure 4: Default Firewall Rules

You control inbound and outbound traffic with firewall rules. By default, the FVS114 has two Firewall rules: all LAN users are allowed outbound traffic for all services, and all inbound traffic from the WAN is blocked (except responses to requests).

As mentioned above, you won't find port forwarding anywhere on the FVS114 interface. If you want port forwarding, you must create a rule to forward inbound traffic to a specific LAN address for a specific service. You might perform this task if, for example, you were hosting an FTP server on your network. The FVS114 provides a pre-populated list of 40 common services, such as FTP, HTTP, Telnet and others, which you can use when defining rules.

Figure 5 shows an inbound firewall rule set to forward FTP traffic to a local host on the LAN.

Figure 5: Rule to Forward FTP Traffic to a Local Host on the LAN

If you need to create a rule for a service that's not included on the list, you can use the Services screen to define your custom service. Later, you can use this service when you're creating the rule.

For each rule, you decide how to handle the traffic by choosing from the following options: BLOCK always; ALLOW always; BLOCK by schedule, otherwise Allow; and ALLOW by schedule, otherwise Block.

There’s only one global schedule that you set up from the Schedule screen; therefore, if you decide to apply schedules to your rules, the same schedule will apply to all the rules.