NETGEAR UTM5EW-100NAS ProSecure UTM5 Appliance with 1-year Subscription Bundle 8000 Simultaneous Sessions 90 Mbps

Pros: Easy to configure, 1 year of subscription included, traditional setup options.

Cons: slow interface activity

Other Thoughts: Makes me throw even more rocks at the Zyxel I bought and tossed. Easy traditional setup, boom, out of the box it works as a router....which is a precondition to all the window dressing. Then lets me tinker as time allows and figure out the UTM stuff....great, scanning email with no appreciable slow down. So far, it is up, running, routing, and not dropping the WAN or any DHCP clients, so I'd say it is working as expected. VPN clients still coming thru and logging in....bonus.

Only drawback is that your changes, once saved, seem to take a good while before actually working....like a minute. So put your patience on when working with the unit.

Pros: Just the right amount of configuration options for the home office. Plugged it in and was online within minutes, then spent an hour or two drilling into all of the configuration options to see what was available. Those with an intermediate understanding of network and firewall terminology will have no problem finding their way around the web-based UI and configuring the device to meet their needs.

Cons: Significantly noticeable hit on performance when scanning HTML content. Business class service gets me 61Mbps down- when HTTP content filtering is turned on, speed drops by almost half!

Web based management interface is s l o w. Navigation design could use some work- on some screens its not obvious how to cancel and return to the last screen because the only two buttons are "Apply" and "Reset" on the page.

Other Thoughts: Unlike other reviewers, I've ordered from Newegg multiple times and haven't had any issues with activation keys being stale.

Pros: Malware, intrusion, etc security appears to be excellent. SSL VPN works; email scanning good; content blocking controls simple/good. Good value with gigabit wan and lan. Nice visual with dashboard that summarizes threats blocked. Noticed significant decrease in volume of spam being sent to users after installing (I think this is due to web content blocking).

Cons: Interface is laggy and "old school-ish". Inbound filtering/forwarding options not as sophisticated as my DIR-655 at home! Noticable, but tolerable lag in email downloads (imap/pop3) due to scanning. Speedtest.net shows that download speeds dropped from approx 6.9 mb/s to 5.8 mb/s.

Other Thoughts: I chose this over the Sonicwall TZ 100 because of reviews showing the UTM 5 has superior security and gigabit wan (going docsis 3 soon), but no way to test the quality of security. I think if you need sophisticated VPN options, IPv6 tunnelling, or the like, you would be better off with the Sonicwall from what I've read and experienced with the Netgear.

Pros: Easy to use, effective, great support from Netgear. If you're a small business looking for an effective spam/malware/virus device this is great device. Yearly subscriptions is around $200. Handles multiple VPNs, client and client-less. Currently have 2 linksys VPN routers connnected to it and it works great. It's easy to set up, but for advanced users it provides a lot of customization.

Cons: No cons so far, though the firmware could download a little faster.

Other Thoughts: Don't order from Newegg. The warehouse where these ship from (Dedicated Logistics in Chicago) employs people who are stealing the 1 year subscription key from the box and using them, so when you get it the key gets rejected as already being registered. Happened to me on 3 different units.

Pros: This thing is easy to set up, with great wizards. The amount of support when needed was outstanding!

Cons: Only con would be is that it's fan noise is noticeable.