Cisco RV215W Wireless-N VPN Router

The Cisco RV215W Wireless-N VPN Router is an easy-to-set-up router with built-in firewall, a VPN server, and wireless networking. Performance is decent for its class but nothing spectacular. However, small businesses will like the snappy interface and ease of management.

Cisco has packed in security, networking, and business-class features in the RV215W, and it shows. Therefore, it is a little surprising that some of the features we take for granted in consumer and gaming routers, such as Gigabit Ethernet and dual-band speeds, are missing from the RV215W. We've looked at a number of business-class routers recently, and the RV215W doesn't quite stack up as well against the Draytek Vigor 2920n??or even the consumer-focused Buffalo AirStation Nfiniti High Power Giga Wireless-N Router and Access Point. That's not to say the RV215W doesn't shine in certain situations, and, at $143, is well within SMB budgets.?

The RV215W feels like an upgrade of RV110W and RV180W in some areas, but a step back in others. If you are happy with your current business-class router, stick with it and don't bother switching. If you need a new business-class router, the RV215W may be a fit, provided you don't mind the missing features.

Hardware Specifications
The Cisco RV215W has one 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet WAN port for Internet connectivity and four 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet LAN ports in the back. There are two omni-directional 1.8 dBi gain fixed external antennas on the back for wireless networking. Square and compact, it measures 1.18" x 5.91" x 5.91" (HWD) and weighs a mere 0.61 lbs. The back panel has a reset button to reboot the router or to restore factory settings, and a port to plug in the AC power cable.

The glossy front panel has an on/off switch and indicator lights for power, USB, wireless activity, Internet connectivity, and for each of the four LAN ports. The router supports only single-band, at 2.4 GHz.

The fact that the RV215W offers only 10/100 Fast Ethernet is a big disappointment, especially since the RV180W supported Gigabit. While adding Gigabit can slightly increase the cost of the router, it is an increasingly more important feature for businesses that rely on file-sharing and remote applications. The RV215W supports VLANs, but, with no Gigabit, inter-VLAN routing will be slow. Businesses looking at VoIP applications or video streaming would benefit from having dual-band.

Features
Like the earlier RV110W and the R180W, the RV215W's built-in VPN server would appeal to many businesses. Considering how expensive and time-consuming it can be to deploy a VPN server for remote workers to connect and access office printers, databases, and applications, a router with built-in VPN is a bargain. The RV215W supports VPN passthrough for PPTP, L2TP, and IPSec. Up to 5 IPsec client sessions using the Cisco QuickVPN client and 5 PPTP client sessions for remote access are supported. The VPN server also supports the triple data encryption standard (3DES) and one IPsec site-tosite tunnel to support branch offices.

The number of supported client sessions struck me as another step back, since the RV180W supported 10 gateway-to-gateway IPSec tunnels, 10 Quick VPN tunnels using the Cisco QuickVPN client, and 10 PPTP tunnels for remote client access at a time.

Administrators can set up up to four wireless networks (SSIDs) and four virtual LANs (VLAN) to limit access to sensitive information and offer guests secure network connectivity. While the router supports DNS proxy, it doesn't have actual DNS server capabilities built-in. With the RV215W, administrators will be able to handle basic network functions as well as monitor password complexity to ensure administrators are protecting the network.

Administrators have a choice between WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup), Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) personal and enterprise, WPA2 personal and enterprise for encrypting the wireless network. As always, we recommend WPA and WPA2 whenever possible?Next: Setup and Performance

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/IiS_5zgxmBU/0,2817,2414872,00.asp

piracy sopa marg helgenberger censorship wikipedia sopa and pipa bills censoring the internet