Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA Review

Brand new for 2013, the Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA Wireless N router for small business and home users. With the option of using IPv6, a firewall, QoS and supporting client and site-to-site VPN’s, this router has everything to facilitate your home or small business branch. We’re going to run through the features and then round off with a conclusion and customer reviews.

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Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA Features

 

Cisco have bundled some features that are essential for any small business router, as well as a few pleasant ‘nice to haves’. Let’s run through them….

 

7 Features of the Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA

 

IPv6 Addressing
The future of the Internet is here – IPv6. The Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA comes packed with the option of using IPv6. Future-proof your router knowing that you are ready for the switchover. Includes traditional IPv4 as the default.

IPSec VPN
Log into your network from anywhere in the world, securely. You can have up to 5 concurrent remote users log into the RV215W-A-K9-NA from anywhere on the Internet by logging into the router, using a secure tunnel (PPTP, IPSec & L2TP encapsulation). Access your private files and folders any time you want. Windows and Mac OS computers are supported.
There is also the option of setting up a site-to-site VPN to another IPSec enabled router anywhere on the Internet – connecting two networks together with 3DES encryption.

Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA IPSec VPN
Firewall
Protect your network by using the built-in firewall to control what users on your network can access on the Internet as well as protecting your network from intruders on the Internet. Access Control Lists can be used to give maximum control over what is and isn’t allowed.

QoS (Quality of Service)
Protect your sensitive traffic with QoS. Voice, video and business critical traffic types can all be prioritized to ensure they aren’t impacted by the other data that either you or other network users may be downloading at the same time.

Wireless 802.11n
The Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA uses Wireless N technology to give your wireless users faster access to their files with better coverage. Also backwards compatible with devices that use 802.11g/b.

USB Ports
Have ‘peace of mind’ by utilizing the USB port for 3G or 4G connection to the Internet. If your standard Internet connection goes down, use the USB port for resilience. Data card required for 3G/4G

Guest Wireless
Give your guests separate access (to the Internet for example), knowing that your internal LAN network won’t be accessible or compromised.

 

Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA Technical Specs

  • Wireless 802.11n/g/b
  • WPS/WPA2/WPA/WEP
  • VPN – IPSec/PPTP/L2TP/3DES
  • 1x Site-to-site VPN – 5x Remote Access IPSec VPNs
  • 4x LAN ports
  • 1 year warranty

Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA ports

Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA Conclusion

 

Pros

  • Remote Access
  • Cisco quality brand
  • Future-proofed with IPv6

 

Cons

  • No Dual-Band

 

The Cisco RV215W-A-K9-NA costs a little more than other Wireless N routers out there, but there’s good reason for this. One is that it’s a Cisco router, which instantly gives it credibility, and the other is that it has features that are geared towards the small business market – Not that it won’t function well in the home, there’s just the added bonus of having the likes of Remote Access IPSec VPN for individual users, and the ability to create a VPN connection to another network – for example, another business branch.

Like other small business routers, the RV215W-A-K9-NA is GUI menu driven to make setup and changes easier. The GUI is intuitive and easy to navigate around. It takes around 5 minutes to get set up. A matter of cabling it up and then powering on. Using our laptop, we browsed to IP 192.168.1.1 and were greeted with the GUI main screen. You can set up manually or use the incorporated setup wizard, which takes you through a series of prompts to get set up.

Some features are nice-to-have’s, and others are critical for your home or business. QoS has four priority queues available to put different traffic types into. Each queue has more priority than the other, and you can decide how much bandwidth each queue can prioritize. DSCP & CoS is supported on this model.

VPN’s can also be configured – in two IPSec flavors:

1) Site-to-site – using 3DES encryption, so that you can connect another branch to yours to securely make it one autonomous network.

2) Remote Access VPN – again using 3DES, enabling up to 5 remote workers to simultaneously log into the network from any location. This is done my installing a client on the remote user’s PC or Mac.

The RV215W-A-K9-NA also supports up to 4 vlans, so you can add a switch and use 802.1q trunking to segregate areas of your network, or add wireless vlans for that matter. There’s also a fully configurable firewall giving the option to control your traffic with Access Lists.

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