SmallNetBuilder

The FVS318G is a redesign of NETGEAR's FVS318 SMB VPN router. The "G" has one Gigabit Ethernet WAN and eight Gigabit LAN ports instead of the 10/100 WAN and LAN ports of the 318.

The photo below shows a Star (now Cavium) STR9102 as the "250 MHz" processor that NETGEAR specs, which is supported by 32 MB of RAM and 8 MB of flash.

A Broadcom BCM53118 9-Port GbE Switch with 8 Integrated 10/100/1000 PHYs is hidden under the large heatsink and what appears to be a Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet PHY connected to the single router WAN port is under the smaller heatsink.

The G supports a mix of five site-to-site and client-to-site IPsec tunnels that can be 56-bit (DES), 168-bit (3DES) or 256-bit (AES) encrypted. A full set of IPsec features is supported including manual and IKE SA keys, pre-shared key, RSA/DSA signatures, IPsec NAT Traversal and PKI with X.509 v.3 certificate support.

The SPI+NAT firewall's features include keyword filtering, port/service filtering and static and triggered port forwarding. Bandwidth can be controlled by in and outbound bandwidth traffic controls, service-based QoS and traffic metering. The maximum number of simultaneous sessions through the router can also be dialed down from the 6,000 maximum specified sessions.

We confirmed NETGEAR's 25 Mbps LAN-to-WAN throughput spec, measuring just shy of 26 Mbps with a simultaneous WAN to LAN and LAN to WAN traffic test. Unidiredctional throughput measured just shy of 23 Mbps in each direction. Due to our testing limitations, we were only able to confirm that 200 simultaneous sessions were handled. IPsec tunnel throughput will be tested in the final review.

A full review is coming within the next week or so. In the meantime, use the Router Charts to compare the FVS318G to other routers.