NETGEAR FVS336G-300 ProSafe Dual WAN Gigabit Firewall Reviewed

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At a glance
Product	NETGEAR ProSafe Dual WAN Gigabit Firewall (FVS336G-300) [Website]
Summary	Updated, more powerful version of dual Gigabit WAN IPsec and SSL gateway router supporting 25 IPsec & 10 SSL concurrent tunnels with 4 port Gigabit switch.
Pros	• Higher performance than previous versions • 802.1Q VLANs • Hardware DMZ port • Dual WAN
Cons	• Confusing VPN wizards • SSL VPN setup is challenging

Typical Price: $430 Buy From Amazon

Introduction

Updated 2/25/16 - Router performance retest due to measurement process error

We last looked at NETGEAR's FVS336G VPN router over 7 years ago! The latest version, the FVS336G-300 aka "V3" offers quite a few enhancements over the original model, including a higher performance processor, hardware DMZ port and additional VPN options.

The FVS336Gv3 is designed for small and mid-sized customers with up to 100 users. It has a new look over the old model, now housed in an "industry-grade metal housing". It remains a passively cooled, silent, desktop sized router designed to provide simultaneous connectivity to up to two internet providers, remote connectivity through a multitude of VPN options and security through a highly configurable firewall.

The FVS336v3 measures 10"W x 7"D x1.56"H. The front of the router now has both the LEDs and the RJ45 ports. So if you wanted to stick it on a shelf in a rack, everything is right where you need it. There are four 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN ports, and two 10/100/1000 Mbps WAN ports, shown below.

FVS336Gv3 Front

NETGEAR FVS336Gv3 Front

The rear has a console port, a locking security port, a factory reset button and power receptacle, shown below. The power callout is incorrect; that's a DC input. Unlike the original, the V3's power supply is outboard.

FVS336Gv3 Rear

NETGEAR FVS336Gv3 Rear

Inside

The new V3 is equipped with a Cavium Octeon Plus CN5010 300 MHz single core CPU. The CN5010 has integrated coprocessors for packet I/O, QoS, TCP acceleration and VPN encryption. We've previously seen this processor in Cisco's RV 120W and RV 220W and NETGEAR's UTM10. The RV 220W uses a 400 MHz version, while the UTM10's processor runs at 500 MHz.

Other key components include a Broadcom BCM53125 Gigabit Ethernet Switch, 32 MB of Macronix Flash and 128 MB of Samsung DDR2 SDRAM, shown in the board image below. Note there are heatsinks on both the CPU and switch that were removed for the photo.

FVS336Gv3 Mainboard

NETGEAR FVS336Gv3 Mainboard

Table 1 shows the key components for the 336G-300. Components for the earlier version will be added when NETGEAR provides them.

	FVS336G-300 (V3)	FVS336G-200 (V2)	FVS336G-100 (V1)
CPU	Cavium Octeon Plus CN5010 @ 300MHz	Cavium CN3005 @ 300 MHz	Cavium CN3005 @ 300 MHz
Switch	Broadcom BCM53125	Broadcom BCM53115S + B5081	Broadcom BCM5398
RAM	128 MB	128 MB DDR2	64 MB DDR2
Flash	32 MB	32 MB	16 MB

Table 1: Component summary

Features

Here's a quick summary of the FVS336G's key features. I'll be getting into more detail on some of them later.

Network

(2) 10/100/1000 WAN ports
(4) 10/100/1000 LAN ports
WAN Load Balancing and Failover
350 Mbps LAN-to-WAN Throughput rating
IPv4 / IPv6 Support
802.1Q VLAN (254 VLANs)
SIP ALG
Bandwidth Profiles
QoS
Traffic Metering
DDNS

Security

SPI Firewall
DoS Protection
Block TCP/UDP Packet Flooding
Hardware DMZ port
MAC Address Filter
Web object and keyword filter

VPN

IPsec (78 Mbps throughput rating, up to 25 tunnels)
SSL (14 Mbps throughput rating, up to 10 tunnels)
PPTP and L2TP Server
User authentication methods = AD, LDAP, RADIUS, WIKID, MIAS, NT Domain, Local Database

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