NETGEAR ProSafe Quad WAN Gigabit SSLVPN Firewall

UPDATE Nov. 23, 2015: Recent firmware updates are now delivering the throughput promised by Netgear and improvements to the management interface have been signficant making this device very easy to configure and maintain. I have purchased 4 of these to date and am going to be pulling the trigger to purchase 3 more before the end of year. That's how much it has improved since my initial review.UPDATE Aug. 14, 2014: Netgear has made several improvements to firmware that have improved the performance of the device and as such I have raised my rating to three stars. The problems that persist however (see later comments) continue to hold the device back and that is why I say it "Falls short". Almost there but still needs work.-----------------------Marketed by Netgear as an "Enterprise class" business product, the device fails to measure up unfortunately. As a firewall and VPN device it is solid as the day is long. If your main concern is security you can't go wrong with this. However I purchased the SRX5308 to replace another Netgear device (FVS336G) because the FVS336G WAN to LAN throughput maxes out at 55-60 Mbps. With assurances from Netgear support that the SRX5308 would achieve WAN to LAN throughput of 440Mbps I decided to purchase the 5308. Unfortunately the 5308 doesn't deliver the goods.With my ISP now offering speeds up to 300Mbps I was confident this device would deliver the speed and security required for my network. Connected directly to the ISP I reach speeds that exceed the guaranteed service speed. Sadly when connected to the SRX5308 it falls short only reaching speeds to about 85Mbps on the WAN to LAN throughput (that's about half the speed achieved without the device inline). The throughput is even worse if you enable the traffic metering capabilities of the device.I expect speed loss with an enterprise SPI firewall but with advertised throughput to 440Mpbs there should still be plenty of overhead in the device to achieve the service speeds offered by my ISP.

I was assured this box would 'shotgun' the 4 ATT dsl lines coming into the business. Unfortunately after much research and settings manipulation this box does none of that. Whether you choose round robin or failover to start, speed tests show that no matter the configuration only one line is being used for data. A single working data line with three redundant lines is ridiculous.The ATT techs (useless morons) suggested this unit to get faster speeds as ATT only allows 1.5Mb lines per account. I need at least 5Mb for remote camera viewing and was PROMISED that this would be my best bet. Yes, I also gawked at 1.5Mb line limits. We can only use ATT in our business location. No other provider is available without huge expense to run cable and or fiber. I tried third party companies that also promised low cost direct dealing with TW but that never happened.On the good side, I figured out an issue with extreme latency when web browsing. Clicking on a link made you wait up to two minutes before getting a response or a time out. Now it's instant.I've had it running since the day I got it, ~2 months, with zero incidents. Other than not getting the promised speeds, it works.

The first unit was DOA. When I turned it on the Power light and the Test light came on but the port lights didn't flash like they should and the Test light never went out. Netgear Support confirmed that it was probably stuck in Power On Self Test and they even initiated an RMA even though I told them I was going to return it to Amazon. Amazon was quick to issue me an RMA and sent a replacement right away. The new unit is working perfectly and was straight forward in configuring. I will be adding a second WAN connection in about a week so we will see how the load balancing works out. I will update this review if possible after getting that working.

Do not buy this thing if you expect it do actually do what the marketing tells you it can do. If you're going to simply plug a couple of WAN interfaces into it and have a couple of simple vLans behind it then you might be satisfied.If you intend to use any of the advanced WAN-to-LAN firewall features or expect the WAN interface to be able to consistently answer secondary IPs on your public side then save your money.I spent the better part of a month trying to get this configured for some very basic duties. For example, a DNS server was put behind the firewall into a VLAN and I created a firewall rule to forward DNS requests on a specific IP address on the public side to this NATd machine. AFter working fine for about a week the firewall rule suddenly appeared to change from the specific IP I put in there to 0.0.0.10. I have no idea how that happened but it took my network down because the Slave DNS servers could no longer talk to my master behind NAT.This is one of several problems that I've had and struggled with Netgear tech support to resolve. Their solution is to have me do packet captures on all sides and send them to them. I'm experienced enough to know how to configure simple firewall rules and I know that I didn't make these changes (they appeared on a handful of non-related firewall rules).I say they shipped this product too soon and didn't properly run it through QA and they're trying to put it on the shoulders of their customers to troubleshoot the device. Well that doesn't fly for a piece of hardware that is designed for the border of a network with high bandwidth, which is the segment they're going for here.BAD BAD BAD Netgear. Then to tell me it's my problem and not theirs in the end is a rediculous way to treat their customers. I have a Linksys RV082 that is handling the same role, only it has 2 instead of 4 WAN ports. The bottom line is, this product looks like it can handle everything and that is just too good to be true.Buyer BEWARE!