NETGEAR UTM5-100NAS ProSecure Unified Threat Management Appliance 8000 Simultaneous Sessions 90 Mbps

Pros: As NewEgg doesn't have (or I couldn't find it anyway) a method to update your review I'm submitting a new one. Netgear released a MAJOR firmware upgrade. They went from the 1.x.x-x series to 3.x.x-x series and WOW what an improvement. The unit is stable, responsive and throughput has increased all the while adding new features. I have not used all of the features of this unit, but as a content filtering gateway for a SOHO it works very well. I'm revising my recommendation from avoid to consider.

Cons: Netgear's interface is still ugly, but this isn't a beauty contest. Finding where things are in the layers upon layers of menus/pages can be a challenge as it isn't always intuitive. Once you learn how things are organized in the Netgear world it becomes easier as there is consistency across devices.

Other Thoughts: Netgear has added application control, the ability to connect to a ReadyNAS for storage to quarantine items and most importantly, cleaned up their code. Even during A/V signature updates when the CPU is pegging around 100% web traffic still flows. If someone is downloading something it no longer spikes the box at 100% impacting others. I've used an SSL VPN solution to connect through it to another network without any issues. I've gone from hating the device and never turning my back on it, to liking the device and trusting it enough to ignore it while I focus on other things.

Pros: Feature Set

Cons: Feature set doesn't work. I purchased a UTM5 through another seller as it was less expensive elsewhere. I've owned it since Februrary 2012. The longest I've gone between power cycling the unit is 4 days. Performance is poor, I've only found ONE firmware version that is close to stable. The forums are full of people with the same issues I have. The thing runs fine for a bit, but then, mysteriously the CPU ramps up to 100% and all of the memory gets eaten up and the unit siezes up. Netgear's response is to reset to factory default when upgrading firmware. This only causes marginal improvement in time between failures. Other recommendations are to turn off the features that make this more than a standard firewall. It's a waste of money and I'd avoid until Netgear decides to re-engineer the devices. Other issues - downloads can and will ramp the CPU to 100% which severely impacts other users trying to access the internet.

Other Thoughts: Also, when ever it does an automatic signature update it ramps up the CPU to 100% causing issues with surfing the web and users end up seeing random "503 errors". It's truly disappointing. This is something Netgear could've hit big on, instead it's more of an epic fail. Also, Netgear really needs to get with the times and do some serious revamp to their GUI interfaces. They're ugly and it's not always easy to find what you're looking for even if you know what Netgear calls it.

Pros: I didn't use this long enough to really find any pros. It worked as a router, but that's about it.

Cons: Very, very slow interface through the browser. I thought it was locked up at times. The fan is louder than the 3 fans on my server put together. For the VPN it seems to only do preshared keys, not certificates. I returned this product.