Cisco Small Business RV042 VPN Router Dual WAN

Pros: Decent uptime, when it works.

Cons: This is my second on of these -- the first one was dead after 2 years. This one has a serious problem that will result in you being unable to access the web admin if you enable the firewall. See this thread for details:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2159137

Cisco has known about this issue for a long time and have done nothing!

Pros: Very simple and reliable. Never had any issues with it. Easy to configure.

Cons: A very outdated design with a limited feature set. Not a very fast router.

Other Thoughts: There is much better available at this price point.

Pros: Metal Case, Cisco in Name Only

Cons: Received the unit this week with a manufacturing date of 07/12, however it had a firmware of 02/11 which failed to allow any login from IE9 on win7. Had to use FireFox to get past the login screen.

First it has a bad certificate credential even though it says the cert is for the MAC address of the unit.
Next even with the latest firmware, it would not allow IE to go beyond the login screen. This is with all IE controls disabled, all Win7 FW, AV & other services turned off. CISCO prominently states IE 6 or newer (NOT).

Once in the device, it did not seem to want to hold settings. Spent over 2 hours with CISO SMB support who could not tell me why it would not work with IE9, or why it had a bad cert, or why it did not seem stable. Suppose to call back today even though no ideas about how to address any of the issues.

Other Thoughts: CISCO is missing a huge opportunity. The SMB market generally grows companies into MidCap and Enterprises. To offer such poor product quality is crazy. I guess the old saying that "nobody got fired buying CISCO" is of the days long past....

Pros: This unit is very easy to configure and most functions work right out of the box. We were able to use the port forwarding, VPN with no difficulty what so ever. Compare this to R180 which is branded as a VPN router - for the few bucks more the RV042 is a much better choice

Cons: In the lan configuration, you have to specify a /24 network.
Subnet masks of 255.0.0.0 and 255.255.0.0 is not supported. DHCP is Missing is a way to configure multiple static IP's provided by the ISP. In our case we have a main IP and a /30. So there are a total of 3 IP's
There is no way to configure the /30 IP's and assign them to a port.limited to the one subnet only.
VLANS ID's are static VLAN1..VLAN4 not really a business style orientation. would like the freedom to name it whatever we want. Can only provision 5 ID's for the PPTP VPN. I know it only allows 5 connections, but it would make more sense to allow more to be provisioned but only accept 5 connections

Other Thoughts: Missing is a way to configure multiple static IP's provided by the ISP. In our case we have a main IP and a /30. So there are a total of 3 IP's
There is no way to configure the /30 IP's and assign them to a port.

Pros: I waited a long time to rate RV042 and usually I don't rate but I can't resist. I have two rv042 old hardware spec w/ 1.3.12.19 firmware in hardware VPN on static IPs 24x7x365 for more than 4 years. From time to time VPN use to drop due to unreliable IP service but after having the ISP fix the connection - not a single drop. I also use OpenVPN, it works just fine. For this price this VPN router is the gold standard for SOHO. I hope Cisco made it even better with new hardware version 3.

Cons: none.

Other Thoughts: OpenVPN is tricky to run on different Windows versions. Some need Windows Firewall running some don’t but this is just a minor issue. You still need to have basic understanding of networking. If subnets are the same on both ends don't expect VPN to work.

Pros: The best router we ever bought. We have a 20Mbps DLS modem plug on the primary WAN port. The connection is rock solid.

Never rebooted since its installation 8 months ago. We have connected a switch on each of the 4 LAN port to provide Internet service to about 30 computers.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: DHCP work perfectly on all ports!

Pros: Great idea with good price..... had it worked

Cons: Unit fails to acquire DHCP on primary WAN port. Secondary port is OK. After having spent 8 hrs, flushed the firmware etc... WAN1 fails to get DHCP IP. I tried different DHCP servers (DSL modem, Cable modem 1, cable modem 2)... no luck with WAN 1. The Ethernet WAN1 works though, it is just that it fails to get IP from DHCP on that port. Finally I got it working after 100 tries, only to see that after 10 minutes WAN1 again lost connection. WAN2 is stable

Pros: It has a great interface and you don't have to reboot after making changes.

Cons: The VPN craps out sometimes. I have had to restore settings a couple of times in order for the VPN configuration to work. If you have it working then save the config if not good luck getting it to work.

Other Thoughts: The interface is laid out pretty nicely but I would stay clear if you are doing VPNs .

Pros: Easy to setup, dependable, great value!

Cons: runs a little warm, but if you keep it in a decently cooled place you should be fine.

Pros: Worked well for a few months.

Cons: Two dead routers.

Other Thoughts: I bought two of these so I would have a backup if one had issues. I configured both routers in an identical manner and only had 1 active and plugged in with the other sitting next to it, ready to have cables swapped and be powered up. Well, the active router stopped working, and when we switched over to the backup, it didn't work either. I can't get any connection or response from either device... it seems so absurd that one could die without being plugged in, but that's what happened.