RV320 Dual Gigabit WAN VPN Router

Cisco RV320 router has decent throughput rates and a responsive configuration interface. With this router I set up a site-to-site VPN, which was fairly easy to do. I also set up Easy VPN server on the router, and yes, it works fine with the Apple iPhone embedded VPN client. And now that the recent firmware release added support for OpenVPN and FlexVPN, this router easily beats alternatives, such as Linksys LRT224, which will now have to drop in price by $60 (about 1/3) at least. At the moment Cisco RV320 is truly a great value for the price.Features that are missing and could have easily been added to this router include:(a) link aggregation in the embedded 4-port switch;(b) NTP server;(b) dynamic DNS choices to include DNS-O-Matic (or OpenDNS, which is now owned by Cisco, so I guess this feature will be added at some point). It is great that this router supports No-IP dynamic DNS in addition to a couple of other options.(c) better security certificate for the HTTP configuration interface (Chrome browser is complaining that the encryption method used is obsolete).A router like RV320 intended for a small business could benefit from more capable CPU and more memory, but one would have to pay up for a faster internet connection in order to feel the difference. In terms of hardware this device has now fallen behind some advanced consumer grade (home) routers, which have faster processors and memory. But compared to RV320, advanced home routers use those extra hardware capabilities to support WiFi, lack in security and VPN features, and are 2 to 3 times more expensive. For a home network like mine (with 30+ devices connected in 2 locations) Cisco RV320 router is great in performance and features.

I researched many different options before settling on this router. I could have left my home network with a basic department store wireless router to host my network, but I wanted the functionality that this router presents. The security features alone sold me for what I needed to accomplish. I wanted to move away from using a wireless home router as my border device, this option accomplishes this and more.I will keep my review simple:Please go to Cisco's Emulator page and play around with the settings in a virtual environment. Cisco has posted all current flavors of this router for its potential customers. The emulator responds to input the exact same way a physical router would. It is a 'try before you buy' situation.The settings are straight forward and intuitive. I have vast experience with Cisco CLI, so the logical inputs that the GUI presents are sound. I have had a learning curve because I know the sections of the running-config that I like to find, but the GUI lets you jump around quite easily. The GUI also prompts you to 'copy run start' quite often; I cannot tell you how many times in CLI that this has saved me some late nights. If I were to enter an incorrect setting that would not fit, the GUI gives a notice and possible remedy. I like this feature, possibly due to the learning curve; but welcome nonetheless.This router is loaded with features and brings my network to the next level. I am quite happy with my purchase. The price is great for what you get. If you know what you are doing with networking equipment, this router will satisfy the home/small business network as a viable solution. I can safely access my home network when I am deployed to any location.

I have been using a PIX-501 for over a decade and it finally died (not to mention it didn't support IPv6 and was a major pain to configure in that pseudo-IOS CLI). I needed a replacement fast and cheap and the RV320 fit the bill. I was a little scared at first, because there has been much negative reported about this device, but more recent reviews have been positive. But, the price was right and I needed it fast, so what the heck?It really only took minutes to get the IPv4 parts running and we were back online! The web interface is not snappy, but if you've ever had to figure out the CLI of a PIX or ASA, this is heaven. No 400 page reference guides or configuration manuals to get basic firewalling in place! It is performing far better than the PIX did by a long shot, and did I mention, no CLI?Having gotten the office connected again, I moved on to other cool features. I have had an IPv6 connection via Hurricane Electrics tunnelbroker.net for some time and because the PIX didn't handle IPv6 I had to run a parallel router/firewall box to terminate and route for that. The RV320 has this built in - it is honestly a little hard to figure out at first, but once I found the page to configure it and translate tunnelbroker speak to Cisco speak, it was up and running in minutes and I get to remove my IPv6 kludge and all the cabling and hassle that was.I wanted to use VPNs on the PIX, but never really got that working well, or really at all. The RV320 appears more flexible in the types and configuration of VPNs than the PIX and working with those is my next project.In short, I love this thing. I had visions of going through the week+ of configuration nightmares (and this was with a service contract and the help of Cisco's TAC) I had with the PIX. I still don't understand how some of the config works and have been scared to ever touch it. The RV320 has taken maybe an hour to configure.I think that probably the fact that it just works is the key thing - the features are here and they work for everything I've tried.This brings me to my negatives on the RV320. First off, the Cisco documentation is, well, pretty light. It's full of uninformative things like "Receive Packet Count - the number of packets received on this port" - they really need to add more about what is is you're doing and how to do it. The formatting of the documentation is also atrocious, sometimes you can find what you're looking for but the instructions on how to get to that web page are 4 pages ago and the heirarchical indentation makes it hard to tell where you're at in the manual. It would be very nice to have a cookbook style of document.There are numerous little bugs too that detract from the overall experience - a simple example is the transmit byte count in the traffic statistics page which currently shows I've got 18446744072555806836 bytes transmitted (an average packet size of 6TB). I believe that they will clean this up eventually. Nothing I've run into has stopped it from working how I needed it to.The layout of the web pages could also use some help - trying to find the page to configure my IPv6 over IPv4 tunnel involved exhaustively going through all the menu items - there's a mixed tab, radio button, and page thing going that can be confusing. Again, this hasn't stopped me, just after a couple of days of intense use of the interface, I still have to resort to notes to figure out how to configure things. I know it's tough to get right, but I hope Cisco makes the effort.