In the past several months several very old SRXN3205 devices failed and I put in warranty claims. The replacment offered is the FVS318N. Now with 3 of these devices in place i'm constantanly struggling with daily issues. The FVS318N has problems and Netgear doesn't seem to be aware or willing to fix.
All three of my FVS318N devices drop WiFi connections, VPN Connections, and LAN port connections every day; and it pains me to be put in a sutuation where I have to 'Ask the Community" for help when the manufactuer of the Device should be finding a solution. It makes no sense to me that I should pay them to figure out what is wrong with their device. So much for my RANT.
I'll just have to keep sending them back and hope the replacment works.
WiFi stops broadcasting 30 minutes after Boot time.
VPN connections drop 15 minutes after connection is made.
LAN ports drop packetts so badly workstations indicate the NIC cable is unplugged.
I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. I believe you have an ongoing online case with NETGEAR Support about your concern. I suggest you to provide feedback via the the online case about the status of the replacement FVS318N you received and report if you experience any issue.
So far all of the FVS318N units I manage exibit poor behavior. I've replaced all but one with FVS318G models to resolve issues.
The one I still have to replace with the new unit just received via RMA exibits failure when using the VPN tunnel function.
I can establish a VPN tunnel between my home FVS318G and my client's FVS318N. The tunnel will stay UP until I try using it.
So if I establish the tunnel and immediately open a RDP connection through the tunnel to my client's sever the tunnel will fail within 30 seconds.
If I establish the tunnel and do noting with it the tunnel will stay up for hours. However as soon as I launch a RDP (remote desktop connection) through the tunnel it fails within 20-30 seconds. DPD fails and the tunnel from the initiator end appears open for about 15 minutes (but unusable) and the router at the other end shows the tunnel status as due to time out. I've reset to factory, updated FW, reprogrammed and get the same results. This is the 4th FVS318N i've had to replace in as many months. Netgear has been very good about replacing the faulty units; in fact I have 3 new units sitting on my desk and i'm oposed to putting them into service because they just keep failing. Tomorrow i'll pull the 4th unit out of service and replace it with a like model and would bet my britches it will fail in some maner. The 318N is bad hardware and should be replaced with a more reliable solution. I've wasted hours upon hours of my time that is not billable to anyone. I have used Netgear equipment exclusively since 2003 and frankly am about to give up because i'm not making money spending hours troubleshooting faulty equipment and creating service tickets and RMA exchanges. Obviously we get what we pay for which is why Sonic Wall cost 5 times more but works every day all day and rarelyever fails.
In my experience vpn tunnels on smb equipment can be VERY finacky to set up. A lot of times even settings that don't make sense (DPD, keep-alive) need to be set on or off for a connection to be stable.
The fvs318N is definitely capable of good uptimes and mutliple site-to-sites without issue. I have 3 of them in production for several years now, and it's maybe every 6 months I have to reboot them if I don't reboot them for some other reason (like a changed network configuration) prior to that.
You know how much the enterprise gear costs and how these are an absolute bargain when they work--but that can be the trick--getting them to work exactly how you want them. But this is the case of any smb router (I've found the cisco rv series to be in the same league as the netgears).
Just some food for thought. You know how your clients are too--they probably would have balked at the price of sonicwalls and might not have given you the job. There's always that slippery slope when estimating jobs with these type of configuration uncertainties--and it can eat your lunch as you've seen, no matter whose gear is involved.
I had a similar problem, although mine is a VPN from FVS336 to a Cisco ASA5505 and it would only stay up for part of the day. I found an old post from 2011 where a guy said he switched his MTU value to 1430 and instead of using DES/3DES, use AES-128 and SHA-1 instead of MD5. I made the change yesterday morning and I'm going on 24 hours with no drop. I know it's a different model but I got a 336 after having the same problem with the same 318 you had, hope this helps you!
