BR500 Issues and Feedback.

Been looking forward to the BR500 release for some time now and finally just procured one through Powershift Eval.

 

First impressions:

DHCP Servers and VLAN setup through Insight got my blood pressure way too high.  No features for setting up IP Address Reservations through Insight either.  Once I passed my self-imposed 72 hour time limit in trying to locate reservation settings and make the VLANs work, I deleted the BR500 from Insight and tried to set it all up locally.  That turned into the next ordeal.

 

Removing the device from Insight, unlike an AP with Business Central, does not factory reset the router.  It also will not allow you to log in using the default username and password.  Many different methods of trying the factory reset button were employed, but on the third try of turning off the power switch, pressing and holding the reset button and powering it up, then holding the button for ~15 seconds did the trick for me.  It wasn't an issue so much of it not looking like it wasn't doing a reset, it was more of an issue of the single PC I had connected to LAN1 not being able to browse to routerlogin.net, 192.168.1.1 or any https version of it.  Setting a static IP address on the NIC didn't help either.

 

Once I was able to sign in, I went to task on setting up the different VLANs, IP Reservations for VLANs/Subnets and a few hours worth manual entry as this goal was to replace an FVS336Gv3 currently in use.  The UI is pretty neat, lots of great tools and realtime monitoring.  It took me about 30 minutes to figure out where everything was for my skeletal setup, but it was efficient.  Of note, when setting up IP Reservations, the BR500 does not remember your preferences of how many devices you want to see on screen at a time.  You will have to change it from 10 as default everytime you add a new reservation to 20, 30 or 40 at max.  Also, by default, it is sorted by order you ORIGINALLY added the reservation, just like previous generation firewalls.  Only benefit is that this one allows you to sort them manually by IP Address, Name, MAC Address, etc. temporarily until you make a move/add/change and then it goes back to default order.

 

MAKE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR SETTINGS!

 

Now, once I was happy with my settings, I swapped out the FVS336Gv3 with the BR500 and watched the responsiveness of my network come to life.

 

So then, here's where I get greedy: I then re-add the BR500 BACK TO INSIGHT to see if my settings stuck and synced to Insight.  Yeah, I got greedy and hopeful.  The BR500 managed to upload some of the data but the reservations were lost in translation and the network and internet came to a screeching halt.  Time to remove it from Insight, put the FVS336Gv3 back in place and start over.

 

Circle back around to the top of this post: rinse, lather, repeat, finally get back in and then restore settings that were backed up!  It will prompt you for your password you originally set up from the GUI before you did your backup.  Enter it and presto, it comes back to life, reboots and is happy as it is IN STANDALONE mode.

 

Looks like Insight needs some more tuning up, but the BR500 is pretty rock-solid for the 12 hours I've had it up and running on its own!

-Mike