FVS318N WAN to LAN throughput and performance

I'm very disappointed in the support from Netgear. I have strripped down the router configuration so that minimal logging is enabled and still the loggin seems to be garbled and overrunning. With the Latest software release form august 2016 nothing has changed.

I reboot the router once in a whil and then I'm able to get the speed that I have with my ISP (190 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up). but after a while this drops back to 30/30.

Very disappointed with a product that has a datasheet that claims 250 Mbps throughput.

Hi noibla,

I believe that the NETGEAR Support expert assigned on your case # 27489789 has already responded to you and is asking for the serial number of your FVS318N as well for it to be registered.  Kindly reply into it and keep us posted about the progress of your online case.

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

This is quite interesting.  I've never been able to get any of my fvs318n's above 60 something download on the wan.  I'll be curious to see the solution to this riddle.

Hi All,

The support case had led to the unit being replaced but something else happened too. 2 new firmware releases took place. 4.3.4.1 and 4.3.4.2. The 4.3.4.1 release note have the following comments:

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed the issue where the logs are not displayed properly in the GUI and on Syslog server.
• Fixed the issue where the firewall logs contain incomplete logs messages.

The unit was replaced under RMA afer good response from the Netgear team. I returned my old unit and the new unit came in a box where the specs still referred to the old datasheet (95 Mbps WAN-LAN).

Both units (witn 4.3.4.1 software ran fine with the 190 Mbps consistent download. I also further looked into differences in the hardware platform used (Cavium CNS3411 Network processor). Both units were the same.

To summarise: it was likely a memory leak issue in the prior firmware in relation to the log messages prior to firmware 4.3.4.1

Thank you for posting a followup to the issue!

I will definitely have to try the 4.3.4.1 and 4.3.4.2 releases and see if my WAN speeds break the 60Mbps barrier.  I actually have a much faster connection (150/25) at one of my endpoints that's being limited to 60Mbps, so it will be a worthwhile upgrade if it works for me as well.

So I finally had a need to try the upgraded firmware v4.3.4-1, and I'm very happy to say initial results look great!  I saw 170+ down, which I had to check several times just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong. I'm going to let it sit overnight and let's see if the throughput reduces.  I'll be a happy camper if it doesn't as I was going to replace one of these in the field because it wasn't able to handle the full bandwidth of 150/25.

As an update to this, it's 24hrs later and a speedtest was still 170+ and everything working smoothly.

I have set up an iperf test that will pass a lot of traffic through the router for the next 24hrs.  This will be my final test, and if it passes, it's time to upgrade some of our production routers firmwares. :)

Well 2 days and half a million packets later, it's still running at top speed.  Looks like this firmware definitely solves any speed issues.  I'll be deploying it on our other FVS318Ns. :)

I'm really glad this worked as I was about to replace a 318N in a location where the bandwidth increased to 150/25.

No luck here,

Netgear support are still providing support on this case, but it seems that even more items are being disabled. I had rebuilt my configu from scratch after the recent firmware upgrade. I find it quite troublesome to rebuilt a complex configuration entirely from scratch with every firmware upgrade. Neatgear should really have a solution for this.

I'm considering moving over to Ubiquiti...

Every smb router has to have its config rebuilt, not just Netgear.  And the edgerouters are even worse with the entire config command line xml if it's complicated.  And you'll have to set it up every time there's a firmware update as well.

Programming is just not quality controlled enough to migrate from one firmware to another without configuration rebuilds/glitches unless you're paying thousands of dollars a year for support (ie high end enterprise gear).

Hio SamirD. it seemed taht bandwidt control driver on my ethernet card was disrupting my recent tests. Rebooted the FVS318N at noon today and so far still 190 Mbps / 30 Mbps. fingers crossed...

Awesome!  If you see any more problems, be sure to try a different system if you can.  It's helped me diagnose bandwidth issues before.  But I hope you have just smooth sailing from here!