sundance-communications.com/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX Networking Good VPN Appliance

I am looking for a good VPN appliance (low cost). Our Multitech Routefinder 550s just keep losing the VPN tunnel. We have cable and dsl and have static IPs.

In the same relative price range I like the Linksys WRV54G. It includes extra features like 802.11g and works really well. I have installed several of these and couldn't be happier with them.

You might also look into the Check Point Safe@Office 500 series which is a little more robust.

https://www.checkpoint.com/products/safe@office/index.html

econtrere, I've read tons of bad reviews about the WRV54G. I've wanted to buy it, but have avoided it because of the bad reviews. The concept, as marketed, looks great! However, if Linksys can't make it perform as promised, I can't justify spending the money to see if the reviews are right. Go to amazon or cnet and search for it. You'll see what I'm talking about. I see that Linksys also has not released any new firmware to correct any of the reported problems, so I'm not buying yet.

I have had great luck with the Linksys BEFVP41 (Version 2) routers. They have been around a while, and seem to be very stable for a low-cost VPN solution. I have a friend who I setup on these. They have 3 (soon to be 4) sites all linked to each other via this.

The only thing I don't care for with the Linksys VPN routers is the lack of support for PPTP clients. They only support connection with IPSec clients. This pretty much excludes connecting via Windows' VPN client, without some tweaking. If you can find one that supports both PPTP and IPSec clients, you might be better off, unless all you are interested in doing is linking site to site, and have no need for connection from "road-warrior" PCs.

I have also seen fairly good luck with the Linksys RV042 VPN routers.

Has anyone worked with or used the Netgear VPN routers for VPN, or the Sonicwall VPN solutions? Is the Sonicwall a subscription-based solution?

I did read the reviews on cnet and amazon before buying my first one. If you look closely you can see my review on amazon's site. I have since setup multiple site-to-site vpn's with them. The only problems have been due to unreliable internet connection at a user's site.

Looking at the reviews again, there seems to be several complaints from people trying to use a third party ipsec vpn client. I have to admit I haven't tried that scenario. My recommendation would be to use the Linsys QuickVPN client. It works fine for road warriors and has no problems routing packets or with inconsistent connections.

My experience with them is actually one of the main reasons I decided to join the Linksys Partner Connection. There is no way I would promote and sell a product that I had problems supporting.

Any problems with the wireless portion of the router? What about with keeping the VPN connection "alive". Have you used DDNS with them?

We use SonicWall TZ170 Firewalls. Prior to that we used the SonicWall SOHO3s. The SOHOs are cheap out there if all you're wanting is a firewall with VPN capabilities as they've been replaced by the TZ170s.

I have not had any problems with the wireless portion reported from any of my customers. One of my customers actually has half of his office staff working solely on wireless connections.

I have one of these in my home office and have had no problems with that one either.

I tried using a DDNS service but was unable to use it since I was using a private url instead of the freebie type. The setup of DDNS service was very straight forward through the web interface though.

Check out Netilla Networks SSL VPN appliance. I sold them a few years ago and really liked them. I see Netilla just merged with AEP who I don't know.....

Netilla.com

Watchguard and SonicWall. Though standards are "set" sometimes i find difficulties creating tunnels through differnt manufactures. To simplify try using like appliance with same s/w rev.