Short review: excellent product, buy with confidence.
Long review:
I can start by saying I did trust Netgear. My Netgear equipment runs and runs.
My purpose for the FVG318 which to build a VPN. I had tried the OpenVPN solution, Which is excellent, and works without problems, but suffers from difficulties with Windows (NetBIOS - ie browsing file shares).
So what I wanted to recreate what my VPN between 2 sites, the typical home to office configuration, and I wanted to do it with hardware. The hardware solution has 3 benefits over the software solution: it is operating system independent, it is easy to recreate if a component fails, and it carries all Windows protocols without problems.
So I purchased 2 of thesis FVG318 boxes, with the idea of having them at Either End of the VPN. The Home and Office modem / router (Netgear & Telekom) were switched into Modem Mode (see note below), and the FVG318s connected to them.
Within a few minutes the router were up, running, and offering wireless. To configure the VPN I can not (yet) be in two places at once, so I configured one end and configured the other sometime later. Immediately BOTH ENDS connected and the VPN what available. No problems.
Downsides:
Adding a computer MAC address to the access list drops Access for All Devices temporarily.
The power of the transmitter is not a high as That of an Apple Airport Extreme, so inside a house it can be less than the maximum number of bars you whatever use to measure the signal strength.
Note for the modem modes: For a DG834Gv2 the modem mode works fine, but make sure not to use the same address range on the FVG318 When connecting to the modem functions on this page. The modem silent reserves its 192.168.0.1 address for configuration. Similarly with the Telekom Speedport W303V modem / router, switch it to modem mode, but then turn off DHCP and delete the login to the provider, otherwise it stays logged in and the FVG318 can not login to the same account. Similar to the Netgear, reconfigure the FVG318 to another address range, as the Speedport keeps the 192.168.2.1 address for itself. The VPN Expects BOTH ENDS to use different address ranges anyway, so this would have to be done.
