ZyXEL ZyWALL ZWUSG20W 802.11n Wireless Internet Security Firewall with 4 Gigabit LAN / DMZ Ports, 2 IPSec VPN, SSL VPN , and 3G WAN Support ZyXEL ZyWALL ZWUSG20W 802.11n Wireless Internet Security Firewall with 4 Gigabit LAN / DMZ Ports, 2 IPSec VPN, SSL VPN , and 3G WAN Support

Pros: I do not know networking well and wanted to set up a VPN between my wife's store and our home network in order to monitor some cameras, sales etc.

I have enough knowledge to set up my own wireless network at home. The Zyxell tech support walked me through all of the rest. It took a while to set up, but they were patient with both the cameras and some special firewall rules I needed.

I would not be able to tell the difference between this and any number of other routers... I just don't have the knowledge. The tech support, however, was outstanding. I will buy all my future routers from Zyxel.

Cons: Interface is challenging to those who are ignorant of network setup. Fortunately the tech support is excellent.

Pros: Highly configurable for this price range. I just installed these in two different offices. So far so good.

Cons: The documentation could be better. The examples are too brief and there are not enough of them.

Other Thoughts: I'm pleased with the value. Although I wish I could save some time by finding better example configurations for the typical small businesses I encounter.

Pros: Well laid-out UI
Stable
Very feature-rich for the price point
ZyXel tech support is efficient and knowledgeable

Cons: UI is fairly heavy for remote management if using a slow connection
Enclosure is predominantly plastic, but I guess at this price I feel better knowing the bulk of the investment is going towards good internals and quality firmware

Other Thoughts: I've had this unit deployed in a home-office environment now for several weeks and it's been rock solid, serving 3 desktops, 2 laptops, 2 smartphones, a USB network drive, and a myriad of wireless guests. I'm not sure what exactly was causing problems in the setups of the previous couple reviewers, perhaps older firmware issues that have been resolved since the last few updates? Compared to the plethora of garbage I've used before (consumer-level stuff from Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, etc. just to name a few), it's finally nice to have something that just works reliably and has the processing power, flash and ram to be able to swallow up heavy network traffic and/or routing policies and not miss a beat. Basically, this a Cisco or Juniper for half the price with hardly any downfalls. Well done, ZyXel!

Pros: Has all the features, interface is nice everythign sets up in the way you expect a NG or CSCO firewall to setup. Lots of features

Cons: WLAN is buggy, for the one deskotp that HAS to be wirelses it's fine all by itself. If I try and join my HP laptop to the wireless it stops packet flow to and from the wireless and requires a hard reboot to fix. It jsut doesn't work right, right our of the box I had this problem. I keep looking for upgraded BIOS with no luck. If I cable the laptop, no problem.

Other Thoughts: maybe in the future

Pros: Lots of great features in this firewall/router.

Cons: The WLAN connection completely drops every 6-12 hours and requires the unit to be powered off to reset. I'm not sure if this is firmware related or not, but it is not usable at this point.

Pros: Feature rich device, especially for the price point.

Cons: Using certificates to control assess to the admin console and SSL interface causes responsiveness to drop off considerably. Also, for what ever reason, after a couple of days my wireless connectivity would cease and require a power off reboot to restore functionality. I thought I had a bad unit at first, but the replacement behaved similarly.

Pros: This is a very powerful and versatile router. I purchased this router to give me a home VPN connection to a USG50 router at work. The VPN setup was relativley straight forward. This unit has a very extensive feature list for the price. The hardware has been responsive, stable, and with a pretty good UI.

Cons: Here's where it gets dinged an egg: The wifi isn't well integrated with the rest of the networking. It can't be directly added to any of the LAN segments. ZyXel offers a proceedure for bridging between the WiFi and a LAN segment. However, when I did this, it broke my VPN connection for reasons that I still do not quite understand. Long story short, I disabled the onboard WiFi, pulled out my old Linksys WiFi router (adjusted some settings to avoid IP conflicts), and plugged that into one of the ethernet ports, and mission accomplished.

Other Thoughts: As is usually the case, more features means a more complicated UI and more possible configuration problems. There's probably a way to get everything configured the way I want it without the second piece of hardware, but I've already spent too much time on this. I hold out a small hope that a future firmware update can resolve my complaint.

Pros: I really, really like this device. The through put is really great. I have myself, and my boys gaming...all FPS crew here and we never have any issued. Dashboard is easy to traverse. I am not crazy about the VPN configuration. I still need to mess with it to make it work....ughh.....my have to call tech support on that on ;0. As a tech I hate to ask for help, but it is a little weird. I am very pleased with it, and much less than any other appliance in it's field IMHO.

Cons: none

Pros: Surprised how easy it was to setup. Very stable. Price compared to performance/capability can't be beat.
I really like the fact that I can have all the wireless devices on their own wireless subnet.

Exceeded my expectations.

Cons: I wish it was easier to update the content filtering license online, or through the GUI.

Other Thoughts: I also configured the custom "content filtering" so it blocks ads...love it.

Pros: Great USG with *tons* of useful features...especially for the price.

Cons: Not for the uninitiated. As others have stated, look at the PDF owners manual first...this isn't your Grandma's home router.