CiscoRV110W-A-NA-K9 Small Business RV110W Wireless N VPN Firewall Router

When my company announced that it was opening another small branch office, I thought I'd be smart and pick up a cheapo Linksys router and set up a site-to-site VPN, only to find that any recent firmware specifically disables this feature. So much for being smart, and I wasn't comfortable running DD-WRT in a production environment. Home, yes, work, no. So the search was on to find another cheapo router that supported site-to-site VPN, and I landed here.What I got was a small box that does everything I need a branch office router to do: routing, basic firewall services, and a really strong wireless signal. Setup was, for the most part, as easy as could be. If you've ever set up a router, of any brand, you won't even need the manual to get up and running with basic services. It wasn't until I went to set up the VPN that I ran into problems.First of all, site-to-site VPN is only available in the (at this writing) latest firmware, version 1.2.0.9, first released in March '12. But the router shipped - in February '13 - with an older revision, which I find puzzling. It took me some time to figure out that I wasn't doing anything wrong, it was the router running year-out-of-date firmware that was wrong. Once I downloaded the firmware, I finally had the setup option I was looking for. Except.There's nothing that explicitly says "Phase 2 Negotiation options" or anything similar. Phase 1, sure. That's configured in a separate IKE policy setup from the actual VPN connection. But the Phase 2 config is done in the connection setup, in a section that makes it look like you're just manually configuring Phase 1 instead of using the IKE policy. It's needlessly confusing, and not explained in any manual. What makes it even worse is this router has a limit of a single VPN tunnel anyway, so there's no need to separate the IKE and IPSec configs in the first place. A single page with all the options would be far easier. Or Cisco could, and I can't believe I'm saying this about Cisco, improve their documentation. But after tweaking settings for a couple of hours, I managed to get it successfully connected back to a Sonicwall NSA2400 at the home office, and it's been working flawlessly ever since. It did keep throwing back errors about unable to complete Phase 2 negotiation, but the connection remained live and those messages vanished after a few hours and haven't returned.But other than that hitch, I have no gripes. Some other reviewers have complained that the antennas aren't detachable, and they're not, but I don't see that as a problem. The signal is VERY strong, reaching not only to the far corners of the warehouse with full bars, but outside the office and up the street a couple hundred yards before finally dropping off. For the money, I'm very pleased.

I purchased an RV110W in April 2011 to use in a small business. We had two needs: (1) allow for VPN users to remote into the network, (2) allow a specific and restricted range of external IP addresses to RDP to a specific internal server. These were hard requirements.After some research, I purchased this based upon reviews and the Cisco name. Some of the reviews (off-Amazon) said that the device had a few problems but then said that new firmware addressed these. None of the problems were related to either of my needs, so I didn't think twice about it.It's too bad I didn't.Despite working on configuration, testing, updating firmware, and so on...repeatedly...I was never able to get the NAT to work in a secure fashion via the access (firewall) rules that displayed on the device. Well, to be honest, it worked for a few hours, then stopped. Resetting the entire device to factory defaults and recreating the access rules, NAT, and so on got it working again...for a few hours. This was true even when I was running what is currently the latest firmware release (1.2.0.9).I had two friends who are much more experienced with these things review my general network setup and the RV110W's configuration. Both reviewed the settings and agreed that it should work, after having eliminated other potential problems (such as Windows firewall rules on the server, other devices that might be causing issues, and so on). They each spent several hours helping me...and still, no joy.Questions about this and the strange warning messages I saw in the RV110W's logs after the NAT stopped working in conjunction with access rules were posted to the Cisco support forums.These returned one answer from a Cisco employee: "Don't use both ACL and Port forward on the Small Business routers the forward will be enough to get the traffic through the firewall." (So...I got no answer to what the strange warning messages meant, no explanation of why you can't use access rules and NAT in tandem, no explanation of why it worked for a few hours then filed, and...well, all I got was a "if it doesn't work when you try that, then don't try it again" from them. Thanks.)To be honest, when I did what they asked and set up a NAT with no firewall rules it worked...which is OK if I am willing to accept that my server would be exposed to every script kiddie out there who discovered I have a device globally responding on RDP.But I'm not.What I expected was a "proven firewall" with "access rules support" that "helps keep business assets safe".I didn't get it...not if I wanted to use a NAT, I guess.So for this reason, it gets two stars.And as a coda: when I bought a similar product from a competitor, it worked exactly as expected.

I was really happy to find a router with these features. While overall I am quite happy with this device for my small office, there are some features that are just missing or not quite up to task.ProsReally good throughput on a 50Mb Internet connection.Interface is easy to get up to speed and manage.Good selection of Firewall Options.Wi-Fi range and throughput have been good.Built in VPNConsThe QuickVPN is just not a very good client. It forces you to use Windows Firewall and does not allow you to use a Third Party FirewallYou can't point your VPN clients to use the internal DNS. This means if you try to use DNS name resolution for your internal servers or devices it will not work. This is a major oversight as you can't expect your users to always remember IP addresses to access the share drives or printers, or if they have mapped drives they will not work unless you do it by IP. It amazes me a networking company like Cisco would overlook something so simple yet so important.Does not play well with third part VPN. Since we had the above mentioned issues with QuickVPN we decided to just use out OpenVPN server. Well, Cisco will not allow it to work even if you forward the ports and allow the traffic.OverallIt is a good firewall and router, but it is a poor VPN device with far too basic of features for any good use. If you just want to be secure the VPN will work, but if you want to actually work you will have to manipulate it in ways that are nor really best practice to make it work for your users.

Delivered on time and worked right out of the box.Currently configured behind a Comcast modem providing internet access and VPN access to an office from an XP/W7 client.Because this is not a "high-end" router you have to be patient when making config changes as they can take a long time to intitialize because of low RAM and little CPU horse power in a small office device like this one. VPN works fine (Xp or W7 VPN client to the RV110w). Again, when making changes to say passwords for VPN clients it takes forever for them to stick.... but eventually they do. NAT, VPN, Port forwarding all work fine. Wi-fi setup was a breeze and works great.I just did not like some of the GUI screens as they were confusing to configure and could have been designed and layed out better for the beginner/intermediate office user. Once it settled down it has been "rockin"! Good device for a small office with less than 50 users.(Does not provide LDAP access to Windows AD. You can add up to 4 (four) users for VPN access, but no more; and allocate only four IP's from the LAN subnet).Chuck

The Cisco Model RV110W-A-NA-K9 Small Business Network Wifi Router is an excellent product not only good for small business networking needs but also for home personal networking needs as well. The things I like most is it's on board web based setup menu, which allows you to configure the router using any web browser and since I am a Linux OS user, this is a major plus. I selected this router because it has VPN, (Virtual Protected Network), as well as a built-in Firewall features for added protection of security and privacy. Also, this router makes it very easy to setup WIFI printers and other wireless network devices with a push of a button. However, what I don't like about this router is it sometimes requires a reboot after setting a function, which causes it to go into never-ever-land. In spite of this one problem, this router has a high-bandwidth, making it ideal for video conferencing, Skyping, Youtubing, data transferring and gaming over the internet. Once configured, this router seems quite reliable and it's Wifi signal strength goes quite a distance too. I highly recommend this router!!!