Cisco Small Business RV220W-A-K9-NA Network Security Firewall wired and wireless connectivity for a small office

Pros: On Paper, this looks like a great product, QuickVPN software works great on Windows 7 PC's.

Cons: Several users in the office had trouble (but after several restarts sometimes were able to) getting IP's from router. After Cisco support got me to wipe router and reinstall firmware, would no longer connect to PPPoE Internet (as well as previous issue). Cisco support says it's faulty and to return it, but seems like firmware issue to me since some users didn't have issue (didn't seem to matter OS) some of the time, and before wiping, was able to connect to PPPoE. But cisco don't seem to be working on any more firmware updates (mine shipped with latest version). They also informed me that the QuickVPN software does not and there's no plans to make it work with Windows 8! Wasted hours trying to get it working.

Other Thoughts: Cisco doesn't seem to want to support this any longer. This should be the perfect device for our 15 user office, simple network. But a week of headaches and complaints from users I've returned this, and plugged in our old slow dlink router and all problems gone.

Pros: - Powers on and typically routes traffic
- Decent hardware
- Fairly broad featureset
- Solid potential

Cons: - ~5 minute reboot period for full initialization
- Slow UI
- Software spent less than 3 minutes in a QA lab
- Firmware upgrades require a factory reset if you want device to be even slightly reliable
- DHCP/DHCP relay is flaky at best
- Port forwarding for select services sometimes stops working for no apparent reason
- Finally can have FW rules between internal subnet's/vlan's in latest code update, but there is no way to do a default 'deny all' rule, making this feature pretty much worthless
- Can't run 2.4/5Ghz mode simultaneously
- My Windows 8 ultrabook & several other random devices will not get DHCP addresses unless I put them on a separate SSID, on a separate VLAN & disable inter-vlan routing
- General quirkyness in operation (see previous comment about 3 minutes in a QA lab)

Other Thoughts: I bought this router for myself at home and a few client sites thinking it would be great in a small biz environment, since it was cisco HW at the right price. Sure I saw some bad reviews, but figured they were just from folks that don't know how to get an iPad connected at Panera. False. I have an advanced level of networking knowledge, and this router (specifically the software, because the hardware seems like it would be capable) is absolute garbage. Little things like having to wait 5+ minutes for a reboot when I want to change a setting on a VLAN.. INDIVIDUALLY, is just one of the frustrations that lie within. Granted, the router is more stable with recent firmware releases, but still is not acceptable in my opinion. Now, that being said, if dd-wrt became available for this unit, I think you would be set, since the hardware in this box seems pretty decent. At any rate, after about 1.5 years, I have given up on this thing getting any better, and are moving myself, and my clients, to ubiquity hardware which I have had much better luck with.

Pros: Easy to use UI

Cons: Failed after 2 months, Time to play the "figure out who to send it to, for returns" since were outside our 30 days for newegg

Pros: It turns on when plugged in and power switch is on

Cons: Many of the advertised features do not work after over 1 year. CISCO hase only released 2 firmware updates in over a year and has fixed few of the devices issues.

Other Thoughts: CISCO has fired many of its employees to cut costs and keep the stock price from falling any more. They have also cut product quality and customer support.

Pros: The features it advertises

Cons: Slow throughput, jittery WAN performance. Experience disconnects with wireless and now random reboots.

Other Thoughts: When this was first installed it was very fast and dependable. Now after 7 months of ownership I wish I would have got something else. If you don't mind resetting to factory defaults once a month I guess this is a good device, but lately the random reboots are beyond frustrating. This is a business class device that cannot handle the home use of 2 desktops and 1 wireless laptop. I would hate to see it put in an actual office environment.

Pros: Has a lot of features, especially VLANs and gigabit Ethernet

Cons: Unstable (especially the wireless), slow (especially the DHCP), trapped on Cisco firmware, no command line, no access to the advanced features of the Linux kernel underneath the GUI, outsourced development means very slow firmware updates. The error messages in the logs are plentiful but, without a guide to what they mean, they're pretty useless. I interpret the logs to mean, "This router sucks."

Other Thoughts: The SmallNetBuilder review is totally inconsistent with the multitude of bad experiences this thing is getting. My guess is that there are both bad hardware and flaky software. Many people will get good devices, but a lot of people are getting devices that work marginally. Also, there are probably combinations of settings and clients that make performance drop through the floor. Since the Cavium CN5010 in the router is restricted to overpriced devices, there are not a lot of people working to fix its bugs. The rest of the chips are Broadcom, which is notorious for its poor relations with open source. I do not recommend this router.

Manufacturer Response:

Hi Decade,

We are sorry to hear about your experience with the RV220W. Did you try contacting support (http://www.cisco.com/go/smallbizhelp) or check in with the small business support community (http://www.cisco.com/go/smallbizsupport)? Both are good resources for assistance. Thank you for your feedback.

Andrea
Cisco Small Business Team

Pros: Features sound nice
good packaging
useful size
gig-e ports

Cons: Is not user friendly, UI is extremely slow to respond when it does.... Have NOT been able to get it to setup tunnels with any Apple products using IPSec. Is difficult to configure for running a HTTP server behind it. Does easily allow you to filter internet access based on a schedule and MAC address. WiFi doesn't really turn off when you tell it too. Recommend strongly that you read reviews prior to purchase, wish i did.

Other Thoughts: Really, if you want this type of router then don't buy this one, its not really a Cisco product, but rather part of the Linksys line.... If you need it, spend the extra money and get something from the ASA 5500 line plus a wireless access point.

Manufacturer Response:

Hi Anonymous,

We’re sorry to hear about your issues with the RV220W router. Unfortunately, our VPN client does not run on the Apple iPhone or iPad, so that is why you were unable to setup tunnels with Apple products. To address this concern or others that you have mentioned, did you try contacting support (http://www.cisco.com/go/smallbizhelp) or check in with the Small Business Support Community (http://www.cisco.com/go/smallbizsupport)? Both are good starting points when you need assistance. Thank you for your feedback. We hope this helps.

Andrea
Cisco Small Business Team

Pros: * Great feature set
* Great performance
* Wireless 5ghz performance is par

Cons: * A few big bugs, could not do port forwarding through the port forwarding interface....they would not work unless I setup the acess rule first

Other Thoughts: Overall it's hard to get a router that met all my needs. I saw a lot of bad reviews on this one, and a lot of comments on bugs that sounded like they would impact me. Due to a lack of confidence with other products (and trying a couple others). I decided to go on a limb and see how this router actually worked. It took a long time to setup (in part because I needed to work around a few bugs). In the end, I was able to get around all the problems, and get all the features functioning as I needed them to.

Overall, very happy, don't think any other router in this price range would have worked as good for me.

Pros: This thing is FAST and has great security features. Love all of the VLAN.

-Full Gigabit LAN and WAN

Cons: Reboots take about 4min
Will not do 2.4Ghaz N and 5 at the same time

Pros: Low cost feature rich firewall. One year Cisco phone tech support on product.

I had a netgear FVS318G that I was initially going to replace with a FVS318N in order to have layer 3 switching for VLANs. I had the device for over 2 weeks with netgears support and they were never able to tell me why when I put on the new firewall, configured the same as my old firewall my 1 to 1 NAT rules would not work.

After about 2 hours online with Cisco after purchasing this, I had the same issue. The difference is that there tech support was able to fix it. It ended up being an issue with forcing the Firewall to issue an ARP command to the Comcast Gateway to let it know how to route the requests.

Needless to say I have RMAed the netgear stuff and will be paying the slightly more expensive cost for the Cisco Small Business Gear. 1 week of troubleshooting going no where is unacceptable.

Cons: None yet