Pros: After the most recent firmware update, most of this routers issues have been resolved. Performance is very average.

Cons: Before the update the router would have a lot of dns issues. Some special features are still a bit buggy. Only supports up to 25Mbits.sec. VPN only works between two Netgear gateways or with the Netgear windows software. Install the latest firmware and do the full-full reset.

Other Thoughts: Config is too complicated for novice users. This model should have been tested better before they put it to market.

Pros: Worked well while it lasted

Cons: Died after less than a year

Other Thoughts: The unit will power on, but the LAN ports are dead. Tried to reset the unit without success. I have always had good experience in the past with Netgear products, and my experience with the FVS318G is very disappointing.

Pros: Easy quick setup, no negative issues, solid performance and stable.

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: I replaced my old Motorola SB5120 modem with a new Motorola SB6141 modem. Then replaced the old Linksys BEFSR41 router with the Netgear FVS318G. Setup was easy via online Cox setup for the modem and the Netgear FVS318G fired right up. It took only minutes and I would say no experience is needed. I changed the default user name and password at the Netgear configuration manager webpage.

Pros: 8 Ports gigabit - per paper
typical Netgear interface, straight forwards set up
some bells and whistles.

Cons: my original router died after years of services, and I was in an urgent need to get my network working. I had to break down and went to Staples to get this FVS318G - for the 8 ports gigabit router. Although I read many negative reviews and I told myself - "those people must have bad luck" -- it was slow to start with - and I blamed my Modem being the culprit. Within a week after 318G's installation, I changed the Surfboard modem. Since then, my high speed internet has been "painfully" slow and irresponsible. Then, I blamed on my internet provider. Numerous phone calls were made to Comcast and Comcast insisted it was not Comcast's issues. Of course, from all the negativity of Comcast customers, I felt I was brushed away and being pushed into "whining" unhappy Comcast customer.

Other Thoughts: It has been daily struggle that around 7am - 8am, at night 8pm or so, the system would be crashed, Modem went into "reboot" - no DNS server to be found. I put up for over 1 year. Even I did the firmware update on 318G, the issues kept going.

Until recently, I saw few items on sale from Newegg -- TP-Link TL-R600VPN (only 4 ports gigabit), plus 16 ports gigabit switch ZyXel GS 1100-16, also Motorola SB6141.
I decided it's time to change all of the old devices since my internet has been much slower that I will get all new stuffs to see if anything can improve.
I installed the TP-Link TL-R600VPN first, and wow, the router boot up time is almost instantly compared to 318G's 2+ minutes (this was painful, that when I had to reboot 318G, I went to do something else). The internet speed was back to the PRE-318G performance. I do not even to activate the New Surfboard since I got such a great speed back. Did this tell you something -- after 1+ year of experience, I finally found the culprit. Now, I am happy again and will not hear my spouse complaining daily about the internet.

Pros: Fast enough for most things.

Decent interface, usable enough for those familiar with pfSense.

Reliable. I experienced none of the issues some other reviewers are raging about.

Cons: Not fast enough for my internet connection. I do not recommend buying this for a connection faster than 15mbps.

Other Thoughts: My connection is 50mbps, and when downloading one file at capacity (turns out at about 20mbps), it pretty much cripples the QOS. A single download can stop up all network traffic to and from the device (including config page) until the download completes. However, when operating BELOW the 20mbps range, the device performs like a champ.

I only deducted 1 egg for this. I can live with the (clearly advertised) 25mbps limitation, but I would have expected QOS to still function when the device is at capacity (kind of the purpose of QOS).

I bought this to temporarily replace a server that had melted down, and for the most part it did the trick, during the 3 weeks I needed it.

I did not have need of the VPN, so I cannot comment on that aspect.

Newegg rocks. The end.

Pros: Interface is just like FVS338. Setup is a snap if you are used to NetGear firewalls. Sturdy blue metal case and no plastic. Had this setup for a SMB office in less than 20 minutes, including opening service ports for SBS server. VPN was also easy to setup (again, if you are used to other NetGear Firewalls) and worked site-to-site on first try with a NetGear FVS338 at remote office. It works.

Cons: Couldn't buy it from NewEgg as the existing installed NetGear FVS318v1 died and needed immediate replacement so we had to get it from a b&m store. Doesn't come with at least one real license of VPN client software which supports Windows 7 and buying it costs $60 extra.

Other Thoughts: Updated Firewall to latest Firmware first thing out of the box, setup was easy and quick, installed unit and everything worked the first time. If you've had NetGear Firewalls in the past, you can't go wrong with this one. I don't know whats up with many of these reviews, either they don't bother flashing to latest firmware before setting it up, or they aren't familiar with NetGear's interface and want some fancy do-it-for-you wizard. NewEgg rocks, we'd have bought it from NewEgg if it wasn't an emergency purchase.

Pros: I literally can't come up with anything good about this unit.

Cons: This unit is the most unreliable-least intuitive piece of equipment I've ever used. The user interface is innacurate, it doesn't respond well to telnet, and it's up-time is less than it's downtime over the course of two weeks. I have yet to be able to keep a VPN tunnel open for more than 30 minutes before failure.

Other Thoughts: This unit has cost me over $1000 in support expenses in the last two weeks - stay clear of this one!

Pros: Have had unit installed at clients location for over a year with numerous services configured, time schedules, firewall rules, port-forwarding and a DMZ configured. I'll admit, it was not easy to get everything working at first and there are bugs (even with latest 3.08-12 firmware) but it works.

It has been stated that this unit drops the internet connection. We experienced that on Time Warner business class service about once a week or so. A quick reset and it came back up. Always thought it was the FVS318G. Then the problem started getting worse and it was a dropping the net on a daily basis. If we didn't do a reset and just left everything alone, the connection would restore itself in 5 to 6 minutes - everytime.

After two weeks of using Kiwi (SysLog program) and reviewing the logs, it was finally determined that the TW modem was the cause of the dropouts and not the FVS318G.

Had TW change out the modem for a newer model and we have not had a single dropout on the 5/1Mbps service.

Cons: Lousy logging capability, documentation is poor and tech support is worse than dismal. If you know of a better firewall in this price range then buy that one. Figuring out how to make up a service can be daunting but once you figure out one, the rest are easier.

Other Thoughts: Have not found another hardware firewall in this price range. Next one up that even comes close is nearly $500 plus yearly subscription fee's. I could not get that unit to work (SonicWall) and sent it back.

Yes it has bugs but so does every other model I've tried. For the price - you get what you pay for and for basic firewall and DMZ services, this works. Do the reset and configurations as stated in the manual and save yourself a lot of grief. I agree with what some others are seeing but as I've found out, most of those quirks are caused by misconfigurations and not faulty hardware or firmware. It's not a user friendly firewall and has a steep learning curve for some functions that you just have to figure out and research.

Pros: The flashing lights look nice.

Cons: Even though this is a basic business firewall, I would have expected better from this device. My first device was DOA, it would start, but would have no link lights on any ports. I talked with the support for about 45 minutes and was told that the firmware was bad. I shipped this device back and was sent a new device. I plugged everything in, thinking all my problems were fixed, but, I was wrong. Like others have stated, this won't pass traffic from the LAN to WAN for me. I've reset the device, upgraded the firmware, started from scratch, the device will just not pass any traffic to or from the WAN even though it's configured correctly. I'm used to the ASA 5505, and wanted to look at this for an alternative. After the hours I spent on this device, i'll take the 10/100 speed of the 5505 because I know it works. I have no problem with the Netgear Prosafe switches, but i'll never buy another Netgear firewall.

Pros: Light enough to be thrown easily across a room...

Cons: ... where do I begin? For the first 5 minutes things were great. I was online, everything was working right. As soon as I changed the DHCP scope I lost connection to the web interface, so I thought maybe I just need to renew my lease, well I couldn't get DHCP anymore. So I thought let's restart the box and see what happens, now I have 0 link light except the ports where I never plugged anything in... okay... now at this point I did a factory reset. Well still nothing. I've owned and configured dozens of different routers but never have I even seen anything close to being this bad. It randomly gets a link light if I restart it enough times but then the test light won't go off, or the test light goes off and then there's no DHCP. Maybe if you're lucky this will work fine for you but there's a good chance this will be a worthless brick.