Cisco Systems Gigabit VPN Router (RV320K9NA)

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 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.

So far it has been a nice little router. Simplified version of a full scale business router but that is what I needed for a very specific purpose. Cost was good and performance is great. I read over all the reviews in advance. Did not find any major current issues discussed with the exception of some old comments about things that have since been fixed. One review stated that the first action should be to get the firmware current. That is a typical habit for me and I followed that procedure. It has just enough business level programmability available to let me accomplish what I needed and that can not be done on more simple home routers. The procedure for accomplishing these tasks is different from more complex models which I work with all the time. I would guess that people used to more complex models will first feel confused and those who are used to simple home routers will also feel a bit lost but it really is not difficult and easy to experiment with to get a feel for the controls. Not difficult and help is available. Seems they have disabled the CUI so was at a loss for a bit on how to accomplish something that seemed it required CUI. However, was able to do what was needed in the GUI and all is good.

I thought it would be wise to buy a "name" product, but this has been nothing but headaches. I'll clarify that if you just plug it in with basic config and don't want to use any features (default firewall, no vpn, no vlans) it works fine. But then, lots of products can do that and are far cheaper. It has many "baked in" limitations such as vlan subnet limited to netmasks supporting under 255 units, a severely limited SSH interface, cutting down on ways you might work around what is broken otherwise. Inter-vlan routing has never worked, I'll get it set up and working, following exactly a video produced by cisco, and a few hours later nothing routes; all I have to do is wait for it to go south. Upgrading the bios essentially kills the webui and bricks the unit until you do a factory reset (thankfully there is some way to get around it). The firewall is missing options I've used in the past that greatly simplify rule setting and make intentions very clear, namely that you can't name rules or be specific in the rule about source interface for the configurable ports, and you can't specify destination interface at all. You have to hard-code ip ranges and keep it all straight. There is a limit on how many services you can add and it's inflexible also, not allowing you to combine a service that utilizes multiple ports or TCP and UDP together for example. Given that they force you to make multiple entries for each purpose you can't keep them together easily and you run out very fast. It's also not vlan aware which would be helpful although I don't know if that's standard. The DMZ option would not work at all for me, it's like a dead port which would not allow any access in or out (which I tried in exasperation due to the vlan routing not working consistently). I was looking for the vpn functionality but they no longer offer the vpn client that is reasonable or they want to charge you an additional subscription for that, which was a let down. It may be possible to integrate natively with certain open source solutions but I ended up hosting an open source solution that works much better on an internal vm instead, and my configuration will be more flexible anyway. The manual is not for SMB and online is devoid of useful information -- most notes I've tried to refer to for issues are for enterprise systems that have options this does not have. I don't know why they bothered to produce online videos for this unit because they don't tell you anything you can't see by looking at the screen ("enter your subnet mask into the subnet mask field" or "leave the dhcp option at the default". I'm not a network engineer (I'm a veteran software engineer) but I've also read comments online by folks that appear to be network engineers saying that it's very limited and has baked in oddities that even pros don't follow. That is consistent with my impression. I feel like I paid a premium with the intent to acquire a smaller version of the nice equipment the "big boys" use but in retrospect I paid more and got garbage. In my opinion Cisco really does not know how to be in the SMB OR SOHO markets and should just stick to what they know. I consider this unit a total fail and I intend to replace it. I don't mind paying more but I'm pretty sure I can get something better for cheaper anyway. It's too bad really, because "entry" level experiences have the potential to win future customers. That's not what happened here. I'm rarely so utterly disappointed and even angry. **Edit 1/29/19** In an effort to get my network functioning again I purchased the Edgerouter-4 (ER-4) from Ubiquiti Networks. I had it set up in about an hour and it did exactly what I needed. It has a very flexible and open-ended interface (not cripple-ware) and is based on a configurable linux under the hood -they don't even frown on base OS customizations (with certain limits to their culpability as is logical). It has been functioning great for several days now. Wireshark has shown that the weird and inappropriate packets (invalid ICMP redirects) coming from the Cisco unit are gone, thankfully. I can't say that the ER-4 would be for everyone, but it does appear to be a robust, capable, and reasonably-priced option that many may want to consider. I'd have purchased the ER-6P if it had been in stock but the ER-4 is good enough for now. How did I find it? I found other people who junked their RVXXX SMB units and went to Ubiquiti and said they were happy with the results. So far I'm pleased with it as well. Good luck.

I purchased this to replace an RV-220W that had reached end of life. I upgraded the firmware first and then factory reset it, as many others have suggested. So far, it's been rock-solid. The VPN and VLAN functionality is somewhat limited, but for a home network with three segments (voice, data, and guest) it's fine. The throughput is noticeably faster than the RV-220W. Yes, I know that it's not the same as their enterprise equipment. I've never been a fan of the $30 networking toys that you get from the big box stores, but spending thousands for a router (and a support contract) for a home network seems like overkill. This device is a nice compromise that offers some advanced features, reliability, and quality build at a reasonable price.

I had read the number of the comments posted here before choosing to purchase this item. When I finally ordered and received it, setting it up was rather straightforward. I am not a network engineer but I am familiar with Cisco's small business user interface. The feature set is very rich, and contrary to what I read in one of the reviews here, it includes IP and MAC Binding. The VLAN options also served me well, allowing me to configure a guest network as well as a voice network. I will not enumerate all the features this router has, but so far my experience has been extremely positive. I followed the suggestions to immediately upgrade my firmware then do a factory restore upon receiving the router. Perhaps it was a combination of the recent firmware (June 2015), and factory restore that allowed me to have a good experience with this product. Best of all, my download speed nearly tripled with the installation and configuration of this router. Admittedly, my old router was past its prime, but this was a welcome and unexpected change. The only minor glitch that I ran into was trying to configure the router with Safari. Some of the pages did not load correctly and I had to use Chrome instead.

Retired a Cisco rv042 with the RV320. Several items.... 1. Upgrade firmware before you configure. Some of the abstract bugs mentioned in earlier reviews were corrected. 2. Thruput more than adequate for small business/multi-user home setting. Have 3 lan segments feeding router into a GigE fiber. From reading past reviews, I think people do not understand the difference in thruput capability for Cat5/5E networks and Cat6 networks. Can easily drive 3 Cat5/5e lans (i.e. 100Mb) full duplex full out. Also tested with direct connection between Cat6(1000Mb) connected PC and GigE. Performance of PC topped out before router. 3. As I was changing from an rv042 to the RV320, configuring the network was simple (very similar). Some of the items are in different places in the menu's but not difficult. 4. Basic DHCP, NAT, Static IP, Subnet, DNS Local Database, and Firewall Access Rule configurations all work fine. VLAN configuration confusing. 5. On VLAN.... terminology used differently in different places. A. If you want statistics for static ip devices, you must assign them to a VLAN.....but... B. Unless your other network equipment (i.e. network switches) support VLAN...don't turn VLAN on in the configuration menu. I experimented with this a couple of times before loading in my full configuration resulting in a need to factory reboot the configuration several times. Documentation on VLAN capability wanting at best. 6. VPN or SSL not used in our network so I can't comment on configuring or using those functions. Overall... seems like a solid prosumer class device. If you are familiar with how to configure lan/wan networks, this will work right out the the box. But if you not technically inclined, the product documentation is light which will make this difficult to use for someone without knowledge of how networking works.

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.

Excelente producto, llegó sin demora y hace perfectamente lo que dice hacer, los productos CISCO sin de gran calidad y este no es la excepción. No es barato, pero si lo que quieres es que el servicio nunca falle esta es la solución.

Reçu a temps, correspond au produit commandé

The main reason I got this was using a 4g dongle as a backup for a home office setup. A dongle that’s marked as supported Huawei e8372 doesn’t work , there isn’t any error message to tell why it doesn’t work. Amail to customer suport hasn’t been responded to yet.

Everything is great but only supports 5 users with OpenVPN

Terrible. Worked for 5-6 weeks before starting to crash and repeatedly freeze. Reboot helped, then stopped helping. Hard reset helped once then stopped helping. Device is now a brick less than 2 months later. Reseller is refusing all help with terrible customer service. Avoid this product and anything else this reseller offers. It's clearly a bunch of crap they got cheap and are dumping on dupes like me.