Best Vpns For Small Businesses (2025 Updated)

Received this yesterday and finished setting up this morning. This takes a significant amount of computer networking knowledge to set this up. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of online guides related to homeowners and the average user may be able to connect through it but i doubt it would be set up efficiently.

I believe this to be a great value for money. The subscriptions are costly but data security is not easy and the good companies arent cheap.

Love it! So easy to use, just make sure you update to latest OS first. Some of the settings change on the latest OS. But the Forticlient is solid too! It interfaces with the built in antivirus on the firewall, and the VPN client works pretty solid, you very rarely get disconnected.

I’ve used Fortigate products from the C series to the F series. All have been well engineered and performed better than other comparably priced products, and all had more usable interfaces.

The firewall is great, and I have several years of experience with the Fortinet family of devices, so it was a breeze to setup. Upgrades have been easy as well. The 60E devices, sporting the newer ASIC are quite a bit faster from a UI management perspective than the 60D series.

This little box is a lifesaver! Living in the middle of nowhere, my only option for Internet access is a cellphone. However, my provider only allows one device to connect to phone’s hotspot at one time.

I tethered my phone to this device using the old USB charger cable, and then I setup the little yellow box as my new hotspot. I can now connect as many devices as I wish to this little yellow cutie. Each device gets an IP address via DHCP and the phone acts as a WAN/Internet port, just like any router connected to the Internet does.

Oh, and setup? A child could do it. Connect to your computer and just go to: 192. 168. 8. 1 in your browser. Follow the all so simple instructions and you’re ready to roll! I never even read the instruction booklet.

It was really that easy. :).

Ok. This thing is awesome. If you have a high end camera made several years ago that does not have WiFi capabilities, than this thing is your answer. This teamed up with the ddserver ap gives you not only fast downloads of your cameras raw files, but team it up with a remote power source, it also gives you full camera control of your camera remotely for cool things like intricate time lapse Photography, and all done while your warm and cozy at your computer.

Literally full control remotely and more ability, without spending an arm and leg from the big camera company names that make an inferior product. Also theres a whole community that builds programs/apps for this router that do all sorts of cool things, and the company making it are on board and involved.

six stars out of 5. Its that good!.

Great features for the price. The unit is small but has good transfer. Seems well put together. It has air draw cooling. I believe it has an actual fan in it for the amount of airflow you can feel going through it.

No noise if so. This is the biggest reason my netgear routers keep failing, is from overheating. Got it for hotspot use whilst traveling I think it will work great.

Setup in no time at all, The only slow moment was after setting the WAN ip address there was no gateway field or option so I had to digging around until i found out i had to add a default any any static route to enable it.

Users are happy and currently using vpn features for remote access. No issue or problems at all.

I’ve always used Cisco commercial routers and the RV042 lives up to Cisco’s reputation. I use the VPN system on the router and connect to a WAP4400N wireless access point. I would recommend this router if you are looking to use a VPN for external access.

I’ve had a number of Cisco products over the years and never had an issue with any of them.

If you’re looking for a router with veritably infinite features that’s also cheap, go with Linux / iptables. That’s what I did years ago and I’ve never looked back. At my office I have dual (very old) Dell Optiplex GX260s with a whole bunch of NICs.

They’re redundant to each other (using keepalived), and haven’t had a hiccup in 5 years — they haven’t even needed to fail over. You don’t need a powerful machine; I still have an emergency access VPN hub running on a PIII 667Mhz box — it works great and can still max out my WAN at 50mbit.

I know that this sounds like insane advice. There’s no GUI handholding (though there are some *nix distributions that are GUI-configurable routers), and no manufacturer support or warranty. But it works.

It’s hard and nasty DIY, but you’re not going to get performance and reliability and a huge feature set at this sort of price point otherwise. (Sorry for the rant, but I’ve reserved a special place in the H-E-double-toothpicks of my mind for wee little desktop routers).

Simplicity of installation and configuration was amazing. Managing port priorities and providing for failover or load balanced internet access from 2 different broadband sources was just a dream a little while back.

Add some power, plug some cables and match up configuration selections from a prior single WAN router, and. BAM! Done! Kids enjoy gaming and I like to have sufficient bandwidth to take care of business needs.

Enabling the load balancing option helped keep lots of traffic moving through the internet with little hassle. Where we did have issues were with a certain VOIP (voice over internet protocol) device.

The ability to load balance, somehow created a send on one modem and a receive on the other, basically disabling the ability to use the phone service through the VOIP. There may be a work around for this, but, we ended up connecting the VOIP device directly to the modem and this dual WAN router was connected to that VOIP router.

We have had unusual behaviors in a handful of secured sites, as well. I suspect it is an issue similar to what we experienced with the VOIP routers. As the load balancer splits the send and receive requests, I am not sure if the receiving entity vetting the security can maintain their security token.

In 99% of the cases, the device works well better than expected. Those 1% of the time incidents, however, become pretty frustrating. In hopes I (and others) can figure the proper work arounds for the secure sites, I give this two thumbs up.

Good luck!.

Got this as a digital download and once it finally came it’s just ok. I’ll give it 4/5 because it’s just ok. It is truly easy to use, point and click, but has its issues too. I’m using windows 7 so maybe that’s why but it just slows my speed down and crashes my system but like I said it could be my old version of windows.

So if you have Win10+ it may be the perfect fit. Beyond all that it does what it says it does, gives you multiple devices to use it on, and is pretty straight forward. Out of all the vpn’s there are this one is worth getting.

Lots of servers to choose from in many countries. You can select a server based on your Internet usage. My Netgear router with DD-WRT can be used as a client so that all devices connect to it are covered.

Unfortunately, the connection is very slow. No matter what server in whichever county I choose, my speed is very slow. Using Speedtest. net, my upload speed is always faster than my download speed. I usually see around 10%-15% of my normal speed when the VPN is connected.

NordVPN is the go to choice for me. I’ve tried other VPN’s and none could match the level of compatibility for different Operating systems. From Linux, MacOS, Windows, IOS, or Android. Nord works on all of them.

Also, I like the ease of use, and extent of server choices, even Onion over VPN. Pretty impressive. Another note is the Kill-Switch option in the app has worked very well for me.

I got Mcafee back in college of 2017. My account had been inactive for quite some time as I no longer had the same laptop or ever renewed my subscription on other owned laptops. Today 1/29/2022. I wake up to a charge from them of $84.

99. I immediately called and the guy stated my account was renewed by them back in 2020. I did not authorize this renewal. upon checking my previous statements I see that I was charged $79. 99 in February of 2021 and $19.

99 in March of 2020. How I’ve missed these charges I do not know. My main issue however is since 2017 I’ve changed banks back in 2018 and even lost my bank card a few months back and had it replaced.

There is absolutely no way they should have my card information. If I didn’t personally renew my subscription, then it should’ve not been renewed automatically THREE YEARS LATER. I’ve received no notifications of upcoming charges or anything and did not authorize Mcafee to take my personal account information.

Different amounts have been charged since 2020 and on different months. The guy stated it was a yearly subscription. But what yearly subscription takes out on different months and not even notify customers before withdrawal, especially if price increases.

From $20 to $79. 99 to $84. 99!? But again, I got the Mcafee in 2017,even if it was set up on a yearly subscription, which I honestly don’t recall. It was inactive on the laptop because it broke that same year and I had changed banks since then, which in itself would’ve automatically canceled the subscription being they wouldn’t have been able to charge the previous card.

I would’ve personally called to cancel any subscription had I even remembered, which again is why companies send courtesy reminders to customers once the year is approaching. For them to steal my new banking information and renew and charge my account three years later in 2020 and continue to do so is a complete violation.

I wish I had noticed the withdrawal in 2020 because I would’ve had been called to correct the situation. They got $94. 99 from me for free considering it was still inactive on a broken laptop I no longer own.

Do not trust this company.

The software works well in terms of Anti-virus, shredder and the valuable Trukey password manager. Setting these up is pretty easy via the interface. Trukey is great in generating and saving passwords and notes for any average user.

However, the Firewall feature is mediocre and recently has been causing grief because if you choose to manually monitor the access of programs, the alert viewer (to grant program permission) hangs consistently and hogs your system memory forcing you to reboot your PC.

McAfee has not fixed the bug in last 4 months despite repeat complaints from users on Community centre. Also, you can’t email Customer Support directly to keep track or get tickets as they only provide Online chat/Community blogs and Phone call.

So, they basically want you to waste your time chatting with or calling them for an issue reported by multiple people already. The firewall program access list also lacks the feature of “searching” programs that’s been allowed/blocked by McAfee or the user.

You have to scroll the entire list to find your application and then click Edit buttons at the end to make any modifications to firewall access. For above-average users at the same price, I would recommend switching to Norton or other products without all these hassles and have similar features but not memory hogging bugs.

I have used McAfee virus protection for many years. I tried another software one time in the interim, and switched right back to McAfee. However,, this last time I purchased it, has been a total nightmare.

I always get the upgrade which includes up to 5 devices. We had the worst time installing it this time, or what we thought was installing it. On anything. Period. Even attempting to log into the app at ANY point was again; a nightmare.

Create account. Not found. Invalid ID/user. Wrong password. The entire year this has supposedly been installed on my phone and several other devices, I get the exact same conflicting messages that say my device is up to date and the software is working to fight viruses, even working in the background and then get.

your subscription has expired. Whenever trying to log in I always get ‘create new account’ though I have a password and log in name. Then I get an ad for an outrageous price such as RENEW for $199 or more.

Trying to reach a page/number where you can find a solution or speak to someone has been futile. I did some research right after of reviews and many users have stated how the software is no longer user friendly and many of the same issues I had.

I take reviews with a grain of salt and don’t jump to conclusions, because let’s face it, some of these are way out there. But please sift thru and read the cogent ones for an accurate account of this software, which seems to have lost its use, its integrity, and its functionality along the way unfortunately.

Had a unique circumstance where I needed to learn Cisco IOS on routers and switches, on the actual hardware, and then I could concentrate on the CCNA curriculum. This kit was perfect for that. All hardware was operational and worked as described.

Packaging was solid and shipping rates were great for the overall heavy weight. The rack was easy to assemble. I’m glad I went with the layer 3 switch option because it was necessary for my task. Everything was updated to the latest IOS that it would go on the units.

If I had any gripe on this kit, it would be that it didn’t come with any power cords for any device. I expected that with the phone unit, but didn’t know I would need the for all of the routers and switches too.

Fortunately I had tons of extra standard PC power cables available and just used those. No big deal. I would definitely buy this again if I needed to, and I expect to use this kit for quite a while in learning Cisco gear and IOS.

For bad reviewers. If it is a DoA device, that’s understandable, but to anyone complaining about functionality, especially to those who are rating themselves a 5 in Tech Knowledge understadning, sorry, but when it comes to Cisco, you may want to knock yourself down a few levels of knowledge.

Cisco uses (for good reason) a proprietary CLI owing its’ origins to UNIX. That, of course, has changed over the years, evolving into its’ own product, but has been very stable throughout the years, with the occasional acceptable glitch.

One reviewer stated that it is a complicated setup. I disagree. Cisco has done a fantastic job of getting the Wizard functioning well enough for moderately technical users to set one of these up in their environment.

Again though, they do expect the user to understand basic security and technical firewalling/IDS principles. IMO, if you are not a very technical person, do not buy this product. It’s not designed for home use, but can be in the right hands.

If you are very technical, and have exhausted the capabilities of other Home/SOHO firewalls, and love a challenge, then go for it. This is arguably the best firewall you can buy. And if you are not a technical person, or are not familiar with Cisco CLI, don’t blame the product if it doesn’t “work” the way you think it should, blame your lack of knowledge of the product.

It’s a good device and so common in small offices these days that it’s almost a given. Somebody’s always selling them and if they were as bad as some make them out to be they wouldn’t still be selling this exact model for the past 7 years! It’s an enterprise device not some $50 Best Buy throwaway toy.

It’s just a firewall, however, so if you get virus infections and malware don’t blame the device blame your computing habits and lack of security updates. No device will protect a user from themselves if they’re determined enough.

If you want web filtering buy a sonicwall and pay their subscription fees. I’d wager you’d still get infected if you had bad Internet habits. By the way if you want to set up a websense filter this thing will allow you to use it, all ASA’s support it but you have to run the filtering software on another pc that’s on all the time.

Suggest you buy the smartnet agreement through a cisco VAR (there are VARS that will write one for a brand new one even if not bought through them) At least you’ll get a 1 year warranty and a year of firmware (IOS) updates.

I have been using the latest version 2022 of Norton 360 Platinum edition for about a week now on multiple Windows, Android and iOS devices and it is better than I have expected. Many years ago I had less than positive experience with the old Symantec Norton antivirus products that would bog down even the most powerful systems, but not this version.

One of the Windows desktops I installed it on first is nearly 7-years old and did not take a performance hit with Norton 360 Platinum running on it. The installation was fairly straight forward, I had to create an account, download the installer that detected the antivirus and antimalware software I had running and asked to uninstall them.

Once that was done and rebooted, the Norton360 installer automatically started and completed the installation of the new products. It then downloaded and installed a Live Update patch, another reboot and offered to install a number of web browser extensions for safeweb browsing, safe search and password manager.

Norton 360 Platinum is much more than just an antivirus/malware protection product, it’s a complete suite of cybersecurity protection. I’ve enabled most features such as: 1. Device Security that protects against viruses, spyware, malware, ransomware 2.

Dark Web Monitoring for PII data 3. Privacy Monitor that helps you opt out of people search sites 4. Parental Control to protect your children from unwanted on-line content 5. Password Manager where you can securely store your passwords in an encrypted cloud vault 6.

Cloud Backup, 100 GB included to securely backup important PC data and settings 7. Smart firewall, monitors and blocks unauthorized network traffic 8. Secure VPN network connection I toggled the VPN connection on and off and ran a number of tests.

As expected, when the VPN connection is on, your download/upload speeds will decrease considerably if you have a Gigabit fiber connection like I do. For example I get about 900Mbps downloads and 500Mbps uploads on my wired devices.

With the Norton 360 VPN enabled I only got about 150 Mbps down and 50 Mbps upload speeds. That is a considerable drop even when picking the United States as the country of origin. It would be nice if this information was part of the documentation of the VPN specs, and if it varies from country to country, so people know what to expect.

There are a few other settings I hope I can tweak, along the lines of Norton pop-ups and offers to enable additional features/protection, whether they are included for free or not, I generally don’t like any pop-ups.

All in all, Norton 360 Platinum is a comprehensive cybersecurity product that offers multiple layers of protection for 20 devices of the most popular consumer operating systems – Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS.

I am a bit conflicted with the Norton 360 Platinum protection suite, while it has the familiar Norton Anti-virus interface buried deep into the product it often feels like the product won’t leave you alone.

I’ve used other anti-virus suites and Norton has to be the most chatty of them all, especially soon after you install it. Reminding you to use the included VPN (more on that later), the Dark Web Monitoring, Cloud Backup, Password Manager and various browser integrations.

Somewhere you can reduce the amount of prompts, popups and other items via some changes in settings, but the default configuration is just chatty. Lets start with the Device Security, where you can scan your hard drives, removable drives, force updates of virus definitions manually (this happens in the background automatically) and review security logs.

Internet Security which monitors your Internet activity for various threats. Backup, which can backup your PC and important data to the cloud (the version I have provides 100GB of storage) however you need to smartly configure what is backs up as if you have a large amount of picture or videos on your computer you will receive messages that your backup failed due to cloud storage constraints.

Granted you can only configure this if you have administrative rights on your PC, that level of access is also needed to make any real configuration changes with the Norton setup. As part of standard best security practices, you should use an account on your PC that has plain user rights and only use a full administrator account for configuring changes to your applications or PC.

Performance, again you need full administrative right to Optimize the disk, you can do a limited file cleanup which only cleans up your browser cache (note to Norton, Internet Explorer is history, need to update the verbiage) and Windows Temporary files that are under your user profile.

Startup manager requires Administrative privileges but will allow you to configure the startup behavior of your PC. Graphs will provide you a chart of activities Norton performed and when. Any of the actions that require Administrator privileges should really prompt you to enter elevated credentials instead of just saying Access Denied.

Dark web monitoring is part of Norton Life Lock service and can be configured to monitor dark web activity with any of your personal information, such as address and email addresses as well as other Bank Accounts, Credit Cards, Phone Numbers, Drivers License, Mothers maiden name and Gamer tag.

Now this is great service if you are comfortable with providing all this information in one place and with Norton (what if they get breached?). All of this opens a browser and is not integrated into the Norton Interface itself.

Secure VPN – most security suites offer VPN access which can help secure some of your information and web surfing activities. Most VPN connections actually slow your connection down from your PC or Mobile device as all you internet traffic through a setup of servers.

Norton’s implementation does not use Open VPN, but IPSEC instead – from a performance perspective this is good, but it practices seemed to make my connection a bit buggy. Also, it assumes you only want to use a VPN when connected to unknown or public networks, not your home Wi-Fi if it is password protected.

This behavior also occurs with the mobile device VPN in addition to cellular networks, again in practice the VPN seemed a bit flaky when I installed in on my iOS device. There are also reasons for masking your traffic and sites you visit when using your Internet Services Provider (ISP) or mobile phone carrier since some internet providers monitor your Internet traffic and sell or otherwise use this info and/or feed it to third parties.

Thus I prefer to keep my VPN all the time. If you plan to use their VPN, you can only specify a country, not a specific city. Their VPN servers are well known, and most content providers will be able to detect that you are using a VPN (in case you were going to try to spoof Netflix or another service but connecting to a different country).

Password Manager – useful for some, annoying for me. Parental Controls – useful for those with young offspring, again opens a browser to configure instead of doing it within the app. Pros: – Good performance, not a huge resource hog – Fairly high rated as it catches a majority of threats – Fairly configurable if you have Administrator rights, logging into an elevated account to do that is annoying.

– Cloud storage (100GB) with my subscription level (Platinum) – VPN included, albeit not the best in class – Software Firewall included and mostly configure itself Cons: – VPN automatic configuration seems a bit overbearing and the connection sometimes varies in speed and connectivity.

– The product out of the box is too chatty, need to change items (admin access required) to quiet it down. – Antitrack is not included in Deluxe. – VPN is only configurable by country, not a specific city within one, most services seem to be within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

– Limited amount of VPN servers worldwide.

I’ve been using various flavors of Norton 360 for over a decade and have been using Norton products in general since the early ‘90s. I began with Norton Utilities and Norton Antivirus for DOS and Windows 3.

1 and began using Norton Internet Security when it was introduced years later. Just sharing this to point out that after three decades, I’m more than a little familiar with Norton products. I stopped using Norton around the turn of the century and experimented with numerous other AV and Internet security apps before ultimately returning to Norton.

I stopped using Norton originally because it simply got too bloated and resource hungry. I returned after Symantec replaced the bloated version with a lean, lightweight, resource friendly version. This current iteration lies somewhere in between.

It’s not as lightweight and resource friendly as it was several years ago but it’s not as bloated and laggy as it was around the early 2000’s. Like nearly every other commercial app out there, Norton is now subscription-based with annual renewals.

The program requires a product key and a Norton account for activation and use. When activated through the Norton account, it requires a payment method and automatic renewals are enabled by default. Renewals tend to be pricier than simply buying a new retail license, so I usually disable renewal immediately after activating.

Norton usually sweetens the pot by offering a few extra months if you keep auto-renewal active. Performance wise, I have never experienced a malware or virus infection while using Norton. The realtime protection is fantastic at detecting and preventing malicious files and apps from running and Norton Insight is helpful for those questionable borderline apps that I’m not familiar with.

Other features include no-log VPN and dark web monitoring. The VPN is super easy to use, even for total PC novices. Although most home and ISP routers now typically offer SPI firewall capabilities, Norton provides an excellent first, or second layer of defense in case anything sneaks through.

It also provides robust application control, which many hardware firewalls typically don’t offer. Norton security is excellent and provides a good measure of safety but some degree of common sense is still required.

Risky behaviors like frequently using P2P to exchange or download files from strangers, visiting dangerous sketchy websites, sharing removable media like flash drives among multiple foreign systems and exhibiting other reckless behavior will likely result in an eventual malware incursion regardless of the security software being used.

Norton utilities is useful in some regards but aside from general housekeeping, largely unnecessary. Registry cleaners have always been questionable at best. Most systems don’t need registry cleaning and if any critical registry keys are accidentally removed, it can completely wreck a system and require a full Windows reinstall.

File cleanup can be accomplished for free using native windows utilities. High resource startup programs can be manually disabled in task manager. Defrag may be useful on systems still using mechanical drives but again, is a feature available natively in Windows.

Modern SSDs don’t require defragging and TRIM, the SSD equivalent, is usually enabled in Windows by default. So, in a nutshell, non-technical users may find some benefit in Norton Utilities but anyone comfortable and savvy enough to use native Windows utilities can accomplish most of the same results without a third-party app.

Norton has traditionally been resource friendly with Windows 7, 8 and 10 in the past decade. However, it seems to be a little more resource greedy lately on Windows 11. It caused a noticeable hit to frame rates on my gaming PC.

I tried enabling silent mode but it didn’t result in much improvement. I eventually uninstalled Norton since I only game on the PC and don’t even browse the web on it. I also had an issue where Norton kept blocking Teredo for one of my games which prevented me from playing online.

Nothing I tried could fix it other than completely uninstalling Norton. Norton Utilities was also unable to help resolve the issue. So far, I’ve been mostly satisfied with Norton 360. The anti-malware and Internet security are both top notch, although a little resource hungry.

The Teredo issue was quite annoying and I think I’ll skip the mostly unnecessary utilities on the next go-round. It’s ironic that the very utilities that initially introduced me to Norton three decades ago are basically unnecessary these days thanks to OS advancements and native utilities.

I spent several weeks researching all router reviews to get the best fit for my home replacement system router. I decided to go with synology RT 2600 AC based on the majority of positive feedback. The product came in two days well packaged and included a brief quick reference document for installation.

I followed the instructions three times 30-40 min each without success then called my Internet provider who confirm that everything was working properly through my modem but could not evaluate the router.

I then called Synology tech-support who did very little but to repeat what was in the quick reference pamphlet and then said the problem must be with my modem. So I spent an hour and a half with my modem tech-support who reinstalled all the factory settings without any change in the routers ability to install and link with my modem.

I then spent another two hours with The extended warranty tec service group who was very patient to retry reinstalling and finally said that it was the router that was not recognizing my modem and trying both auto install and manual install was not working properly and finally authorized a return.

Trying to get technical support from the routers manufacturer synology is both a waste of time and totally unproductive long wait access time and no help beyond what was written in the quick install document so I restored my old router and returned the RT2600 AC.

I have no I’ll will for the product but it does not work in my system and no one could fix it!.

The Synology RT 2600 AC may not be the fastest dual -WAN wireless router but it is the most complete and easiest to use for non-network users. The heart and strength of this router is its user interface.

If one can use Windows or Mac OS then then managing the RT 2600 AC with the Synology Router Management (SRM) software is just as easy. For those who wish to take advantage of this router’s many networking features but aren’t learned in networking this is as good as it gets.

Several add-on software modules are available for specific functions. The only limitation is the small number of LAN ethernet ports but if you have lots of wired devices a simple inexpensive wired switch is your friend.

Couple the RT 2600 AC with one or more Synology MR 2200AC units to establish a good strong mesh system. Essentially plug them in, allow them to link up, and done.

This unit shipped with ASA 9. 12. x software which (as of 6 Oct 2020) is almost current. I’m using it as a home network firewall with a cable modem Internet service and it’s rock solid. It support IPv6 prefix-delegation so your protected devices can operate over the Internet as IPv6 hosts.

ASA configuration can be challenging, so make sure you know what you are doing or else get help from someone who does.

The ASA5506-X is robust as always, it came in with code 9. 6 and FirePower 5. 4. 1. Upgrading it to 9. 8 took me about 10 minutes but it took a very considerable amount of time to complete the FirePower upgrade, and the patch (Hotfix).

I need Anyconnect configured in the near future. Considering this model does NOT come with wireless module, I have to compromise my design not to protect the WiFi traffic (hosted on ISP modem/router), and I am not planning to purchase another wireless router so that I could set it behind the FW.

It’s cheaper to get 802. 1ac wifi router than to buy ASA5506W-X (almost double the price of this one).

Cisco ASAs are a great value for the money. There are some minor changes, i. e. the “outside” is not labeled “0/1” as in previous ASAs. Now it is “1/1”. Little things. The iOS has a learning curve for administrators accustomed to cars of previous work.

I purchased this item for use as an internet simulator for a CCNA Security course I am currently doing. The network scenario actually calls for three Cisco 1841 Routers – But the 1721 is a cheaper substitute for the serial connection between the two networks and as it is also running a Cisco IOS I can practice configuring the router.

I chose to create an actual wired network as there are some things Ciscos Packet Tracer cannot do. But as a lowly student cannot afford to get all the latest and greatest gear to practice on. The 1721 is fine for this and with the MOD1700-VPN installed (extra forty bucks) Will serve most of the security practicals until I can get an 1841.

Great router for anyone looking to get CCNA certified. With 2 WIC slots you can either go with 2 WIC 1T’s for 2 total serial connections or 2 WIC 2T’s for 4 total smart serial connections. I have about 3 other 1721’s all upgraded to 128MB RAM running that latest IOS and I have yet to run into any walls using them to get my CCNA.

This router is a great lab router.

Cisco 1721 routers are the award winning small business routers that goes a long way with your investment. Versatile and robust for the users. It has firewall, intrusion protection, intrusion detection and a number of IP networking uses from the vast array IOS available from Cisco.

If you are in Europe, I believe it is a good idea to get a reliable European VPN provider. F-Secure is from Finland and have been quite open about the laws and policies that they have. I get good speeds from them when using VPN.

Getting a hard copy instead of buying directly online is also another good step to make it more private.

Freedome VPN is very easy to install and even easier to use. It comes from F-Secure a renowned security firm. The VPN now comes with a kill switch an important feature for remaining anonymous. Highly recommended.

I bought the 3 license version, used one on windows 10 the other 2 on an android phone and tablet.

I installed this last week & it appears to be working well. The programme tells me it has stopped a great deal of unwanted internet traffic. I cannot see any difference, however, most unwanted traffic is silent & if it is stopping background searches from sources I am not even aware of, then it has to be a good thing.

So far I’m very happy with the MR5200. I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks though. I have been the unhappy recipient of a long term power outage so this has been quite a test. ( Snowstorm packing very wet and heavy snow.

Many thousands if trees and power lines down. ) My 5g Samsung S20 for the first 4 or 5 days of the power outage couldnt get any internet, and the phone service wasn’t great. But, even though I have AT&T for my Samsung and my Netgear, the Netgear has worked very well.

When I couldnt get out with a straight shot on my phone, I was able to use WI FI phone service and that worked great. I bought a highly directional antenna for the netgear but with the massive amount of snow everywhere I haven’t been able to figure out where it needs to go.

However, even with one bar signal strength depending on where I set the netgear, I can still get enough data speed ( even during peak hours ) to stream 1080P video. I did think I had a WI FI issue with the netgear but have found its apparently a Vudu/Fandango problem.

( I seem to be having problems I never had until Vudu merged with Fandango. )The movie “Contact” keeps giving me “slow internet” warnings. I did several speed checks and at that time I was getting 60 mbps.

So no, it was NOT a internet connection issue. For experimentation reasons I tried several different movies on Vudu and only had trouble with ” Contact “. But get this. If I restarted the movie from the beginning, it was fine.

But if I did ANY FFWD OR REV it would hang up repeatedly after that. So never assume it’s anything in particular. Experiment. Let this be a warning to those of you like myself who has 100 videos I “Own” on Vudu.

I will not buy any more Vudu movies. If your internet goes down or has trouble or the service isnt working well, “YOUR” movie can be useless. Buy the Blu_Ray or 4K discs. Players are very cheap and give the best quality picture available.

And if you don’t “need” to have a movie right at its release date, they are cheaper than buying a movie online. Often even cheaper that renting a movie online. The battery in the Netgear lasts at least 8 hours.

(I havent pushed it. ) So thats a plus. On the occasion or two that I had any trouble a reboot fixed said problem. And it reboots pretty quickly. Ive been at this adress for ten years and this is the first time I’ve ever had fast and reliable internet.

I’m in a rural area and there are few choices available. And with this recent and Id say very harsh test of power lines, trees, and I’m sure cell phone infrastructure problems, I am really so very happy with the NetgearMR5200.

To repeat. The first several days of power outage, my new 5g Samsung phone was of little or no use. But even though I have the phone and the Netgear running on AT&T, the Netgear has not let me down at all.

Even with a mile of snow laden trees in between me and the closest cell tower/antenna.

I have been using the Orbi 4g router for almost a year now and have to say that I love it, the security is amazing. The functionality is incredibly user friendly and the best part is I can take it anywhere in my bag with my laptop and have 4g high speed internet anywhere I go.

The user interface is very easy to manage and understand. I would recommend this 4g router over every other on the market based on my knowledge of most of the others out there solely because of how secure it actually is, and it’s useability user friendliness.

I have been repairing electronics for about 20 years now and I highly recommend this router to anyone who wants the ability to have high speed internet where you might otherwise not be able to get it, or simply because you travel and this can be used in a vehicle quite easily with only an inverter.

I use this product daily and for streaming music nonstop as well as using it for movies and tv occasionally. Highly recommend product.

I bought this for a friend who had an AT&T LTE hotspot. The hotspot barely could reach 8MB download and upload was abysmal. He had it inside his house and placed it everywhere he could, but to no avail.

The AT&T hotspot also had poor in-house coverage in his 1200 square foot house once connected. I bought the AC2200 router and an additional outdoor antenna, coax, etc as we thought the issue was building penetration and antenna gain on the AT&T hotspot.

We received the AC2200 and proceded to install it with the Orbi app as instructed (took a while to download over the AT&T hotspot but we perservered). We installed the AT&T SIM into the AC2200, followed the instructions and crossed our fingers.

The AC2200 recognized the SIM and connected to the AT&T network immediately. We answered a few questions on the app and were up and running with a WiFi connection via LTE before we knew it. Using the Oribi app, one can see the “number of signal bars” that the AC2200 “sees” for signal strength from the AT&T tower.

We hadn’t installed any outdoor antenna at this point. Inside the living room, without a clear view to a window, etc, we had 2 bars of signal strength and the OOKLA speed test came back at 8MB. My friend was estatic as the AT&T modem had spotty coverage there.

I then placed the AC2200 near a window in clear “view” of the AT&T tower (there are web pages on line which show you where the towers are, what LTE bands they use, and their coverage so I knew where to “point” the AC2200).

Immediately, after a reboot, the AC2200 showed 4 bars of signal strength! We ran a few OOKLA speed tests and they consistently showed downlink speed at 50 MB or higher and uplink speed at 8 to 10 MB.

I told my friend my cable supplied internet only does a bit better. Smiles all around. We chose to not install an external antenna as the performance was outstanding without one. Kudo’s to the Netgear antenna and radio engineers (I design wireless systems and antennas for a living) for an incredible job well done.

LTE antennas have to cover a large frequency range and be small enough to fit inside the AC2200 package. Awesome performance. I would, in a heartbeat, buy this product again. (I did actually, and two of my friends neighbors have placed their orders after seeing the performance.

) You may not have the experience I had if you live far from an AT&T tower. My friend is at least 5 miles from his tower and the land is flat. I do think that using an outdoor antenna in places with poor coverage will help a bunch (put the antenna above your roofline so it can see all around).

The antenna I was going to use is a Wilson 4G Omni Plus Building Antenna (they sell on Amazon for about 50 bucks, well worth it, great antenna). We didn’t need it, but I’m keeping the antenna for another day when the AC2200 needs help and we have to install an outdoor antenna on someone else’s house.

I’m a big Netgear fan. I’ve bought a lot of Netgear products over many years and have always been a happy customer. The AC2200 is a great product, well designed, and a great performer. The best part of the whole experience this time was seeing my friend’s wife’s face light up when she said, “WE HAVE WiFi?”.

Priceless. Several days have passed and each day I get a thank you email from either my friend or his wife. BTW. The WiFi coverage of the router is incredible. They have a 1200 square foot house. The AC2200 is placed in one corner of the house (so it “sees” the AT&T antenna the best) and my friends wife’s computer room is in the opposite corner of the house.

The WiFi on her MAC shows 4 bars, and she is getting high LTE data speeds on her MAC. The AT&T hotspot would WiFi would barely cover one room when connected to LTE. Again, your mileage will vary with the LTE experience, but if you want to try an LTE connected WiFi router (and you have AT&T or one of the providers Netgear’s AC2200 has been approved for) you can do no better than the AC2200.

It may cost a little bit more than some of the others out there, believe me, it’s worth it.

Excellent security software! Just set and forget. I’ve been using paid AVG internet security (paid version) for more than 10 years. Never had a problem with bad websites, spyware or viruses. It eats them for breakfast! I’ve used other security software in the past, and NONE of them were 100% reliable, especially the advertised ones.

There’s a reason why NORTON and other BIG NAME security companies have to heavily advertise their products! But did you notice how AVG doesn’t need to use PAID ADVERTISEMENTS, because IT WORKS PERFECTLY! 100% recommend AVG internet security.

I’ve converted many of my family and friends, and they couldn’t be happier. NO MORE ISSUES WITH NASTY THINGS HACKING/DAMAGING THEIR COMPUTERS!.

This was used for a renewal. Installation was straight-forward, thanks to instructions from the vendor, but the AVG website required repeated log-ins to my existing account to get going on the first device.

Worked just fine and very quickly after that with my other equipment. Tune-Up has been disappointing, as a number of useful features on the latest Windows version have been removed, notably the duplicate file search.

While not always accurate, it was helpful when shifting work-in-progress files between laptops and desktop PCs, where duplication was likely. Once I discovered the loss, I didn’t update Tune-up on one machine in order to retain this feature.

AVG overall remains more naggy than Harry Mudd’s wife (one for the Trekkers, there). Like most software houses, they seem to harbour the belief that my equipment belongs to them, sucking up resources while crying “Update me! Update me now! Don’t do that! Don’t do that either! Put the AutoUpdate back on – I feed when I want to, whether you like it or not! You’ll be sorry you did that.

I’ll make your life a misery. and by the way, buy this VPN from us as well. ” etc. etc. AVG gives me more cause to tinker with diverse PC and software settings than any other application own. They tend to bury quite a few tweaks outside ofthe main menu, so you have to hunt for some, and I have to fiddle with services.

msc more often than one should. These are my devices, AVG, and I’m not a six year old. Live with it. The trouble is, the others are not much different. I’ve used a variety of AV products over the decades, and (at time of writing) I’ve found AVG is the best package for the least money with its 2-year contract, providing you don’t renew with them directly when your sub expires.

The eye-watering prices quoted on their website are ludicrous to the point of laughable.

What a horrible multi-pack internet security bundle! I can’t activate it on MAC or IOS. The instructions, or lack of, are horrible and there isn’t a single AVG Ultimate app for OS X or IOS that I can find.

It appears to be multiple apps for multi devices with no clear instructions on which you need for which and how to activate or use any of them. Stay away from this horrible product! I don’t know if BB will give a refund on this open package, which is another horrible waste, but I’ll get a refund if I can.

And speaking of horrible, why have a packaged box for a digital download with nothing in it but the activation code, which doesn’t seem to work, and convoluted instructions, which do no good. This is an environmental nightmare with unneeded packing for a digital product which could be sold online with instructions online.

AVG, CAN’T YOU JUST SELL THIS AS A DIGITAL DOWNLOAD on BB WITH CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS FOR ONE APP FOR EACH OS DEVICE? Stay away from this and do not buy this horrible product or a like one from AVG for any number of devices, OS X, IOS or PC!!!.

It’s not easy to configure. You have to know a lot or do some homework to get the device set up properly. You can set it to a default factory setting that allows you to dial in with a web browser and a specific version of Java to use ASDM – Adaptive Security Device Manager that provides a nice, easy to use GUI for configuring it.

Otherwise, you have to use the command line which isn’t very polished or user friendly. It is rated by some as an enterprise-ready device for a home office or small business supporting VPN connections.

I’m using it as a study platform to get better at firewalling, Cisco switching and routing so it’s good for study or actual use in your home or business network.

A very compact computer that is a bit underwhelming as a CAD workstation – you can only put in a mediocre GPU with a 35W T-class CPU before the PSU start struggling – so you won’t be looking at a rendering beast or modelling an international airport in LOD500.

But that is entirely missing the point – this is not a Workstation. This is a 1 litre chassis that has – AMT management, – official Ubuntu support (if that helps procurement signing it off), – 2x SODIMM slots up to 2x32GB, – 2x PCI-E4 x4 NVMe bays, and – an internal PCI-E3 x8 Half height expansion bay allowing non-proprietary cards.

This combination of factors make the P350 Tiny fairly unique in the SERVER market. The flexibility the PCI-E slot makes this a very versatile edge solution – with a single 40GbE QSFP+ NIC like a MCX353A-QCBT you can have a low footprint on prem storage/SQL etc solution; with a small Quadro you can have a competent CUDA compute node; with a PCI-E capture card you can have a video capture station you can stick behind a VESA monitor.

The possibilities are endless. The only thing to consider is whether 11th Gen P350 warrants the higher price over its older siblings 10th Gen P340 and 8/9th Gen P330, which still offers everything listed above at a bargain price.

However if you are reading thisreview when Alder Lake P360 is already out – do have a think about those as the Efficiency cores might drastically improve the utility of a small node like this.

I’ve been doing PC’s for both personal and professional use, in one iteration or another since my first Apple II GS (with the optional 1 megabyte of RAM). I’ve owned hardware from several different manufacturers.

Some have been great, some not so much. I had my first experience with Lenovo back in 2014, with a pair of ThinkCentre M83’s (Windows 7 Pro, updated to Win 10). They were recommended by a friend who is an IT consultant.

The experience with them has been excellent, and by that I mean they have been used daily, seven days a week without a hitch. While they take a little longer to boot now than when they were new, once up and running, they are still quick.

I have also purchased Lenovo Chromebooks for my (now) 10-year-old grandkids. I can’t quite say the kids have abused them, but aside from me making sure they stay updated, the kids haven’t exactly treated them like the crown jewels.

They are also still running fine. To the P348, I’ve always preferred to spec my own tech. It’s getting more difficult to find “customize and buy”. The P348 had the best number of options in the function and performance categories I could find, and I did spend a fair amount of time looking.

The price was, I thought, very fair for what I was getting, and I managed to hit the timing right with a coupon or two. Without going through the whole list, I opted for the i9 processor, 32 GB of memory, and the NVIDIA T-400 video card, among other things.

It did take a couple of months to build and ship, but that’s the nature of today’s world. It came very well packaged and arrived a little earlier than I expected it to. The video card requires mDP cables, which I had ordered in advance.

Once unpacked, I was up and running in about 10 minutes. The machine, even with the fan running is very quiet. With the SSD as a boot drive, from power on, it is ready to go in around 30-45 seconds. While not specific to the hardware manufacturer, the Windows 11 is pretty simple to set up, and is functionally close enough to Win 10 so as not to cause any real headaches.

Performance wise, the thing screams. I haven’t had it long, I’m writing this review about two weeks after receiving it. Not that I expect to need it, but I did opt for the 3 year premier support upgrade.

It’s priced very reasonably, making me think that Lenovo has enough faith in their equipment to feel I’m not going to need it.

The system overall is a work of art, it’s amazing. The problem was the fact that I got a custom brand new system which took 2 months to come in, then when it came, 2/4 ram slots did not read anything.

I called premium support (signed up for 5 years) which they did a diagnosis and came to realize that the motherboard might be DOA. So, they send a NEW RAM to diagnosis. Tech came in the next day to diagnose, figured it was a dead motherboard, so the tech called lenovo to send in the motherboard.

I did get the motherboard on the next day in which lenovo sent out a tech after 1 day of the part arriving. problem was, the motherboard that the factory sent is again DOA. so they had to send out another motherboard, took another 2 days to get the tech.

fortunately the tech from peopletogo was amazing and accomodating, he installed the new motherboard and the PC was finally up and running! After being so excited, I started installing all the programs and all and yet again found that the microsoft office I have bought is a subscription and not a permanent license.

(when I bought my old lenovo t470p, the option for microsoft office on the first page of building your system was always permanent, now it’s not) So, be wary of what software you purchase!!! read them first because lenovo wont tell you it’s a subscription.

overall experience is terrible but like I said, the PC is a work of art. I am just overall sad.

I was a little skeptical when this arrived but turned out to be an amazing product. It came with the best OS you could get in one of these. I love to play around with this and my son is studying for his CCNP tests so this was just what he needed.

needless to say would buy again. I would recommed this to anyone interested in routing, switching etc. Definetly 10/10 pros and cons: +sturdier than my babushka +more powerful than my babushka beating with a meat hammer +lots of configurability -not for large enterprises.

This router has everything for a small office or better! It could be called a Swiss Army Router. My ISP didn’t get any excuse. That’s awesome

Fast shipment. I configured it and so far it it’s working without an issue.

The items I got ware as described, in good working conditions. It is an excellent home lab equipment.