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Removed the hard drive and booted from the CD ISO image. For a product I pay for I want: -Ease of set up.-Trouble free VPN set up-No restriction on VPN connects. Used the unit in a small office with 50 users. Wasted weeks on this. While these two options take longer to set up than the RV042 they are FREE. Continual issues with unreliable results.-When the battery dies you need to replace the unit. Installing it onto a retired NT4 box.
M0n0 also has graphs of through put an CPU usage.Have used OpenVPN for IPSEC and works more reliably than the RV042 for VPN. M0n0wall allows a lot more VPN clients than the RV042 but not intuitive to set up.
Also only supports 5 users when using PPTP. Felt good going "green" by resurrecting this old box.For the VPN and content filtering i am still looking.
First the good.- Easy to set up- Reliable firewall and router- keywords used for internet blocking of web sitesThe bad:-VPN does not work properly. Config saves onto a floppy.
-Decent monitoring and logging tools.-Ability to KILL IM and Torrent traffic, or at least capture and log IM traffic to deter staff goofing off Tried the cisco/Linksys software and it was useless.
-Cannot block messenger appsIn the end I switched to m0n0wall for the firewall.
Performance of the router is good. I wanted a router that I could use for both load balancing my internet connection between them, automatic fail over from one link to the other, and VPN.I installed the VPN PPTP server, and my Windows XP connection over the internet was a breeze.The load balancing features are a little difficult to understand at the first moment, but then after some time playing around, it clicks. No issues here.Upgrade to the latest firmware as soon as you get it.It replaced my previous wireless router from linksys as well.Recommend to anyone who wants to use 2 WAN connections (home-office of small office). After much investigation, I decided on the Linksys dual WAN router. My apartment has 02 broadband connections: Cable and ADSL.
Note that using RV042 PPTP, limits you to 5 VPN users. This means that VPN clients can use the MS PPTP VPN client that comes with Windows. Keepalive setting per ATT was incorrect. In summary, product is recommended only for someone with networking experience. Finally got it working and set up VPN. This is a inexpensive alternative to a Cisco firewall/router for a small business that needs VPN.
The DSL modem would not function correctly when connected to the WAN1 port; had to use WAN2. No need to install the Linksys VPN software on client PCs. To prep for the install, I went to Linksys.com and got the latest firmware. Happy to see that RV042 includes built in PPTP server. Even then, be prepared to spend some frustrating time. Even with the latest firmware, installing the RV042 took much more time than initially anticipated: ATT DSL modem needed a hard reset and then placed into Ethernet bridge mode.
Needed to adjust MTU settings or FTP transfers would not work reliably.
I can't believe this is a Cisco company - they should be ashamed of their acquisition.Do yourself a favor. They've made some very bad business choices, and their support and product quality has dropped to third world levels. Not to mention the level of technical competency of the people I was on the phone with was next to nothing (total script readers), and they wouldn't listen to common sense - oh, and I got disconnected all the time.As a VERY long time customer (almost from their inception), I'm never buying another product from them.
I ended up finding it a better use of my time just to dump these units and replace them than deal with linksys's absolutely insanely bad indian technical support. So, I'm out 450 bucks, and then I call technical support, and they won't support the older units even though I have just purchased a new one, and want to charge me $35 bucks because one of the 2 units I'm trying to get vpn working with is "out of warranty" even though the one I'm trying to configure it brand new. I own two of these, and had no problems getting vpn up and rolling, but after 1.5 years, I've had both units fail within a month of one another (both just started blinking warning - fried - both in different locations in the us), and fell in with linksys's absolute crap-poor technical support.
What the heck. Run away from Linksys. Here's the hard part.
I replaced the first unit, and it fried to.
failure to do so will result in disappointing performance. Before you purchase a RV042, check the RV082 and RV016 carefully - they are similar routers, but have different capabilities. Your needs may not be met by the RV042.Also - no matter what model you buy - before you bein configuration first upgrade the firmware.
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