Rash of failing FVS318's

No, there is not. Tell him they are old and depreciated, time to upgrade. If you have anything faster than DSL those routers are bottlenecks.

I appreciate your response adit, but under the circumstances of not requiring more than T1 speeds and these models are still being sold, I cannot use this explanation as there's no chance of it flying :(

I've been replacing some of the failed units with the newer FVS318G model as I have no spares while the failed units are RMA'd. Btw, I love this model as it provides some more features as well as a small improvement in response time over lan to lan vpn. I only question the dumb location of the power plug :D.

Then chalk it up to coincidence. There is no remote kill switch on these. I have one (v3) still in a sealed box if you can't find any locally. I keep backups of all of my deployed units, and we no longer have 318v3's out there. PM me if needed.

Update!
Well I found the reason and it's not coincidence but I do appreciate your input adit. After I spent/wasted over 32hrs traveling to my retail stores to replace failed firewalls and of course scour every retail establishment within a 120 mile radius for new FVS318G models in stock, I had yet another device fail today making it my 6th one in 11 days. This is CrAzY so I just had to find some time in my 70+hr work weeks to do a little testing. Well guess what I found, it's a Netgear bug!

FFS I've been going out of my mind as there's just no way all these devices were bugging out after being solid for years. So what is the bug? You cannot have a large list of blocked website keywords and loose power to the device or it won't come back up and stay locked out until utilizing the reset to defaults button and program it all over again, that is if it'll even let you reset it as a couple of them didn't.

I only recently updated my 31 keyword list to 57(According to the v3 manual you can have 64). Each time I have my list of 57 keywords and I kill the power to the device (Yes I know this isn't always a great thing to just drop the power but it happens) it locks up and the device will not communicate with anything plugged into it. I haven't found the specific number of entries that throws it off or if it's even a certain keyword but someday if I have time I will pinpoint it. I also haven't tested the newer fvs318G's yet but I soon will.

Ugh such a mess and a waste of time and money lately over this but at least now I have a grip on the cause and I'm not losing my mind after all. Well perhaps that last statement is debatable as we IT folk are a bit off our rockers to begin with and I think we all loose our minds trying to keep up with this stuff :p

Proseucure UTM would be an choice appliance but that maybe too much in $$ :)

Thanks for the suggestion jmizoguchi! The UTM devices look beautiful for sure and I'm now considering replacing my Cisco ASA device at my corp office with one. But for my remote retail locations I only need a small device that secures the network from outside threats to pass PCI compliance and provide a lan to lan vpn connection to my corp office for POS transactions and corporate email. I live in a get the cheapest solution and make it work environment which is why I love these FVS series devices with their 8 ports as it works perfectly as we utilize 7 or 8 ports in each location.

Thanks for hearing my woes and offering suggestions all! NetGear Rocks!!

I have used too many of those FVS318v2.4 back in 2001 and love it for the performance it did

In FVS line FVS318N is my choice.

You can also look Fortinet for corp router too. They are quite good unit

jmizoguchi wrote:
You can also look Fortinet for corp router too. They are quite good unit

I can attest to that. I have 36 Fortinet routers and have only had 1 die in 6 years.

To OWN3R,

Can I enquire did you open support tickets to replace the group of FVS318 v3.?

If you say they have worked for 5 years
(a) it sounds like an internal chip blowing.
(b) They should be in warranty if bought since 1st May 2007.
(c) As confirmed earlier, there is no timer issue.

(d) FVS318 is approaching End of life and replacement is FVS318G.

(e) Physically you are replacing a blue with a grey unit. Web interface is the same.
But I do accept that there are different firmwares, and config file would not copy across.


Regards,
Marto