NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
BR500 VPN Currently Experiencing Intermittent Connectivity Issues - Reply Thread
Update Oct 30, 2019
Dear NETGEAR BR500 customers,
Over the past two weeks we have experienced extreme instability with our VPN cloud ecosystem. We believe it is due to the scale of custo...
Is there any kind of manual overide we can do to get site-to-site for the BR500's to connect? To be honest I am confused and angry that the BR500 needs to have a constant connection to your servers for them to operate propery. I would think once the BR500 makes a site-to-site connection with my other BR500 (using your server's to negoiate the handshake) it wouldnt need to rely on your servers to conitnue operations.. I guess its just another dissapointing "feature" of these devices. I am really starting to regret rolling these devices out to all my locations spread across the US. I have an entire company of 300+ employees unable able to work today becuase of this.
You may want to look into setting up IPSEC VPN. While you are in the management console, go to devices, and then double click on the device, on the left you should see IPSEC VPN. It does take a little work to get both ends setup though. (I will say that I have pretty regular drops, but that those recover just as fast, and if you have alerting on, your phone, and email will be full of these alerts) The BR500, with their services, can make settting up a VPN between sites much easier, as long as it is up and working.
NathenB, thank you for your suggestion.
Can IPSec and "InstantVPN groups" being running at the same time? Can I connect 3 BR500 to each other using IPSec or is it only a one-to-one type of connection?
Yes, you can use IPSec and Insight VPN services at the same time. The IPSec setup would be more difficult and it will require you to create on the local router a profile for each remote router.
Same as Ekko Coleman I am really starting to regret rolling these devices out to all my locations spread.
For us the problem has been recurrent for November 2018 and has a financial impact on our daily work.
Since then we have been waiting for a permanent and lasting stability of the service.
The question is : Who's going to pay for all these days of technical unemployment ???
J'ai exactement le même problème que vous. Ce produit n'est vraiment pas abouti du tout.
I got three BR500 about 5 months for three different locations that are several hundred miles apart from each other. Since day one I have had to deal with random disconnects, which would require me to reboot the routers. I have also had a real difficult time managing these things remotely since you are REQUIRED to be connected to the management port to do some of the most basic things like port forwarding. Driving several hundred miles to a location just to setup a new port forwarding rule is not an option. So I have had to setup a computer at each location with LogMeIn so I can remotely administer them, which I think is totally stupid, but I see no other option. They advertise this great "Insight Cloud" portal and app, which I had assumed would allow me to do all these basic things, but no. Not to mention when the first firmware update came out, I niavely tried to update the router via the app, since the app was nagging me to do it and I wasnt about to drive 100 miles to do it.. Well it bricked that device during the update and I had to return it. Which put that location offline for several days and meant a drive out to that location.
We have several servers that are required for accounting department, warehouse and sales and when these connections go down, litterally the entire company comes to a halt. Needless to say my employer is not happy paying 300 employees to sit around and do nothing, not to mention all the lost sales and upset customers. All the heat falls on me, the IT guy, which is not fun.
I understand these are only $300 routers and its probably niave of me to assume I could pull off such a task with "cheap" devices, but they were advertised as "enterprise" solutions. Ontop of that, I am paying a monthly subscription fee for this service that doesnt work. I have gone from being a "super-star" IT guy for setting up a failry complex VPN network for cheap, to the excuse for all lost productivity, sales and customers.
The whole reason I got these devices was becuase I didnt know anything about setting up a multi-site-to-site VPN network and this looked like the perfect solution and Netgear has (in the past) been a brand that I respected and trusted. Today my company has been shut down ALL DAY, I have no idea if things will be working tomorrow, but I most likely wont have a job if its not.
Thanks Netgear, I have learned my lesson. You get what you pay for.
In Reply to Ekko_Coleman
#############################################################################
Our experience with this product is almost the same as yours.
While the concept of the cloud based VPN is brilliant - it has not performed at all as we all expected.
My customer is also pretty upset at this point in time.
So far downtime from yesterday is 18 hours and counting ......
While the Netgear support guys in South Africa have been great - it does not help that the BR500's and cloud based VPN fall over all the time.
I cannot believe that a company with a great reputation like Netgear has allowed this product to be launched.
Yes - you would expect the odd issue, and maybe an hour or two of downtime - My Netgear experience so far is days of downtime !!!!!
Netgear has had nealy a year to iron out all these bugs and put backup cloud services in place.
They dont seem to be too concerned in resovling these issues timeously, and end user frustration persists !!!!!
I have used Netgear products for over 15 years and this is the first product I would definately not recommend .....
Bonjour,
Je suis possesseur de 2 x BR 500 depuis plusieurs mois et client Netgear depuis de nombreuses années (routeurs, switch, borne wifi, readynas...)
Je subis depuis ces derniers achats, de nombreuses déconnexions intempestives qui privent une agence de se connecter au siège de l'entreprise.
Sur le papier, la solution proposée était simple à mettre en oeuvre et à contrôler.
L'ajout ou la suppression d'un utilisateur, le contrôle de mes produits Netgear étaient à la portée de mon téléphone.
Dans les faits, la réalité est tout autre...
Je pense connaitre désormais l'ensemble du personnel technique Netgear France et le niveau 3 en Allemagne, je leur prépare même les logs par avance parce que je sais qu'ils vont me les demander, ainsi que l'activation du mode diagnostic, la connexion via Teamviewer, le changement des mots de passe pour qu'ils puissent faire leur tests... mais il n'y a pas de solution stable.
Cela fonctionne 2 ou 3 semaines puis le VPN est "cassé"... Nous en sommes à la troisième MAJ du firmware depuis le mois de mai 2019 et la deuxième MAJ d'Insight.
Ce qu'ils ne vous disent pas, c'est que leur solution passe via des serveurs Amazon et cela ne semble pas être "top".
Parallèlement, nous avons des véhicules de livraison Renault déposés chez notre concessionnaire pour réparation qui ont été bloqués tout l'été car la logistique de délivrance des pièces détachées s'appuie sur des serveurs Amazon qui ont eu de gros bugs selon les informations de notre agent.
A force de tout vouloir (devoir) externaliser, nous ne maitrisons plus rien.
De plus, mes anciens routeurs étaient double WAN avec un failover (FVS336G).
Avant de les changer, le chef produit m'avait indiqué qu'un des ports LAN pourraient bientôt, via l'interface du routeur, être attitré en port WAN. Cette idée semble abandonnée depuis.
Je vais de déception en déception.
Etant moi même distributeur de produits informatiques et membre de plusieurs groupements de chefs d'entreprises, je ne vais plus vanter la qualité des produits Netgear, c'est du passé.
Cordialement,
Francis
I am still unable to connect this morning. Has anyone else been able to connect?
Agreed! There needs to be accountability and a Quality Control group at a large company like Netgear getting on top of all of these issues. Management should "Start their engines" _ Start having meetings with you engineering groups, quality control and development groups so you can better serve your customers--your a public company on NYSE and should hear your customers because we paid for your products and services.
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
