RV325 Dual Gigabit WAN VPN Router

I had been using a pair of cisco WRVS4400N routers to provide a VPN between my offices and internet and dhcp services to each local office for 6 years now. The routers had performed like a champ. I was starting to transmit more data between offices and transmit times were taking longer and longer. First, I increased my ISP bandwidth to no avail. Then I did some digging and found out that the WRVS4400n's had a max throughput of 2 Mbps when using the VPN which translates to about 250KBps. So increasing my upload speed from 3Mbps to 10Mbps didn't help once I realized my WRVS4400N's limitation. I did a lot of reading and wanted to stick with Cisco Small Business router series. I settled on the Cisco RV325 because depending on which specs you read I should get a minimum of 56 Mbps or if I hit the theoretical maximum I should be able to do 100 Mbps. Being my ISP is only 10Mbps even the lower number would work fine. I installed the routers and they have been working like a champ. I know have gone from a 50 hour data transfer to a 12 hour data transfer and general web browsing etc is much snappier. As a note, to migrate I created VPN's between the WRVS4400N's and the RV325 and that all worked fine for a transition with no incompatibilities. The most recent firmware is dated June 23, 2015 and the router has had 4 firmware upgrades that are available on the cisco support site. Being that it has been out for over 2 years now the firmware appears to be mature and with very few known bugs (none of which affect my business). At first I was hesitant to buy a router without Wi-Fi as I needed this but I decided to buy a separate Wi-Fi router and set it up as an access point. There are a few great advantages to doing that. 1. The wireless is offloaded to another box so my main router can concentrate on getting the traffic over the VPN as fast as possible. 2. As the Wi-Fi standards change I can swap out the access point and keep this router in place. I chose the ASUS RT-AC3200 Tri-Band Wireless Gigabit Router because the ASUS (RT-AC68U) Wireless-AC1900 Dual-Band Gigabit Router has been rock solid for a year and a half at my house. I love ASUS routers for wireless access. The RV325 supports up to 17 vlan's and I plan on using a few of them as I upgrade my services within my offices. Another nice thing about the RV325 is the fact that in addition to the GUI it has CLI. If your going to install several of these having the CLI will make scripting much easier. All in all I am extremely happy with this router I think it will serve my companies needs for years to come. If you have the WRVS4400n this is a great router to transition to.

I am very happy about this product. If you don’t have any experience with configuring complex router, you would be frustrating. I don’t have 2 ISP connection, so I cannot test dual-WAN function. But I would assume it works fine. All configurations can be configured by WebGUI. I wish I could have Command Interface to configure all configurations. CUI is limited. I spent quite a bit of time to play with this router before replacing the NETgear router. You can configure complex routing by using this router. Some peoples are complaining the performance of this equipment but I figured it out. You should use latest firmware. Also all home routers in the market are able to automatically optimize the bandwidth and QoS. But I had to configure them manually to get similar performance. For the internet service for the consumer by Comcast doesn't have even bandwidth (upstream/downstream). You have to put right value on the bandwidth management. If you don’t use VPN you should completely disable it. SNMP cannot capture the stats of each ports bandwidth. I wish I could define syslog’s facilities. You probably need to spend a time to reconfigure syslog server.

This appliance was tested and compared to a similar Netgear business appliance. Impressive system for the advanced home users and most small business users but not intended for complex business use with multiple front facing instances. I have tested this unit under basic needs and advanced home/business needs both of which worked well but i did hit some snags with the tunnels and front facing servers hosting my websites and FTP server. I had to use my head a bit to work through the problems that I was experiencing but it was resolved after some research. Overall i am happy with this appliance compared to the Netgear UTM 25 & 50 devices as Netgear charges for everything and you have to buy annual support for advanced replacement options. With Cisco, i purchased a 3 year advanced NBD replacement plan for $49.00 PLUS this unit gives you multiple ports to connect devices. Please remember that this appliance can never be compared to the ASA5505 or higher series. This is only intended for budget friendly home & small business users. VPN works very well, the VPN tunnels work and port restrictions work. I have tested this with gaming as well