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| At a glance | |
| Product | Cisco RV180 VPN Router [Website] |
| Summary | PPTP / IPsec VPN router with Gigabit ports and high routing throughput |
| Pros | • Fast routing throughput • Decent IPsec throughput • Gigabit ports |
| Cons | • Slow admin GUI • Low PPTP throughput • Basic web filtering features |
Typical Price: $112 Compare Prices Check Amazon |
Introduction
Cisco's small business router lineup has quite a few models. I've reviewed the RV120W, the RV220W and the RV042 over the past 18 months. This review will cover the RV180 wired version. The is also an RV180W, which is basically the same as the RV180, plus a 2.4 GHz 802.11bgn radio. It supports four VLAN-based SSIDs, WDS bridging/repeating and WEP/WPA/WPA2 consumer and Enterprise wireless security.
In terms of features, the RV180/RV180W falls between the RV120W and RV220W. Like the RV120W, the RV180/RV180W provides firewall functionality and supports up to 10 VPN connections, but has faster interfaces and higher throughput with its Gigabit WAN and LAN ports. The RV180's 10 VPN connections are fewer than the RV220W's 25 connections and it does not have SSL VPN capability.
Cisco positions the RV180 for small businesses, remote office, and home networks looking for security, remote access and simple configuration. Figure 1 depicts a high level view of the RV180 and its intended uses.
Figure 1: RV180 in use
The RV180 is enclosed in a black plastic case measuring 5.9 in x 1.2 in x 5.9 in. It is passively cooled so runs completely silent. On the front of the device are the indicator lights (Figure 2).
Figure 2: RV180 front panel
On the back are the Gigabit WAN and LAN Ethernet ports, power port, and power button (Figure 3).
Figure 3: RV180 rear panel
Inside
The RV180 is based on a Cavium Econa 300MHz CPU along with 64 MB of RAM and 16 MB of flash memory. Ethernet ports are provided by a Broadcom BCM53125 7-Port Integrated GbE Energy-Efficient Ethernet Switch.
Figure 4: RV180 board
Configuration
The RV180's configuration menus are similar to the other members of the Cisco RV series. Menus are selectable from a menu bar running down the left of the web GUI, each with multiple sub-menus for viewing status or applying configurations. I've laid out the configuration options in Table 1 below.
Table 1: RV180 menu structure
There is a single configuration wizard that simplifies initial setup, and I appreciated the help screens available from the RV180 menu. I found clicking help in the top right corner of any screen brought up some useful information. The manual provides more configuration support, but could use configuration examples.
Booting the RV180 takes up to three minutes before the device is fully functional. Also, I found navigating between screens and applying configurations a bit slow with Figure 5 often appearing.
Figure 5: Waiting
User reviews
View all user reviewsAverage user rating from: 8 user(s)
NOTE! Please post product reviews from actual experience only.
Questions, review comments and opinions about products not based on actual use will not be published.
Good value and features.
I bought this based on the review here, but not user reviews. I additionally read a ton of reviews on Amazon.com which varied widely. I get that some reviews are old and based on earlier firmware.
After a few weeks, I am still happy and impressed with this router. I got it on Amazon and it was really inexpensive for the feature set and very compact.
- the Slow UI - I don't get it - sure, it is not blazing fast, but getting around the menus is perfectly functional and no big deal.
- VPN - no idea, we don't need VPN so I have not set it up - can't comment on that.
- Port Forwarding/triggering - I had to open a few ports for XBOX360 and it worked immediately with no fuss. That said, ultimately I enabled UPnP fod the XBOX and that works even better.
- Sonos - we have 5 Sonos devices on the net - they work fine. 3 wired, 2 wireless.
- ISP is Comcast, but we are not using IPv6 so lack of IPv6 DHCPv6-PD support has not affected us.
- Ooma Telo connected - working fine. Have this on a VLAN with QOS and it works great.
- Several PCs, Droid RAZRs, iPad, Blu-ray players, AVRs, Security Camera, etc. connected and working well.
WAN connections seem quite fast; Internet speed tests easily get the 50/10 that Comcast is providing.
For a home business router, this router is working well - and its compact size fits well in the structured wiring center. For those who like the features and are scared off by the negative reviews, I recommend giving it a try if business level gear with less consumer friendly configuration doesn't bother you. The features and the speed have been impressive so far.
FLAKEY
This device is awesome - for the FIRST FEW HOURS. Very short honeymoon indeed as once it gets settled - like so many mail-order brides we've heard about - this thing just goes seriously off the rails. I will only hit the highlights which, when coupled with the other reviews, should give you enough to make up your mind.
First, the GUI really is horribly slow - even when directly connected via short cat-5 at 1g-Full, it still takes forever to load almost all pages. Next, logging is useless - yeah it dumps stuff in there but it's so freakin' cryptic you seriously need the Cisco source code andor dev guide to understand what she's putting in there.
But worst of all is just that it's flaky. As background, I had two wireless routers hanging off of the RV180 - each wireless WAN connected via a short cat-6 run to one of the RV180's LAN ports. Next, the WAN went to my Comcast DOCSIS-3 modem. The wireless routers were serving DHCP in dedicated scopes, DNS proxy was OFF all around, I spoofed the RV-180 WAN MAC to ensure I got the desired IP, and both wireless and the RV-180 were doing PAT. That's it - extremely simple network. So the issues I had were basically that the RV180 started bouncing it's LAN ports (WAN for the wireless routers) every 5m or so.
Additionally, it would randomly start blocking traffic on the WAN side - but no logs re: any of this whatsoever. As web-pages started dropping, ping and trace became my old trusted friends to help figure out where the drops were occurring. Also, the firmware was the latest from Cisco - and I bounced the device seevral time. In addition, I tried going direct from my PC to the RV-180 LAN and even completely disabled the security features and opened up the firewall - all to no avail - this thing is just plain FLAKEY!!! Mine is going back TODAY and my search will continue...
RV180W - Could do better
I bought this router yesterday based on the main review and the performance lan>wan throughput results.
upon powering it up it worked (sort of). The problem is that whilst I could get the speed. the port forwarding was awful
it just didn't work. Calling Cisco UK for some support was a woeful experience, and they are still to return my call.
I've had to put my aged FVS318 back onto the network just so I can get remote accessibility back.
I now discover that there is a known fault with port forwarding. If it's not fixed by next week. I shall be returning it and just buying a product i have a gut feeling will just work out of the box.
Not very good
I bought the RV180 to replace a Netgear FVS318 that I suspected was starting to die - I would have to reset it every third or fourth day.
Since installing the RV180 my internet browsing has markedly slowed and often hangs until I do a 'reload' of the page. I have played around with various settings and nothing has made this thing pop up to reasonable performance.
Just to make sure it wasn't something my provider had started doing, I re-installed the FVS318 and pop, back up to speed. Now my FVS318 is old and it's probably still dying but it's better than the Cisco RV180.
I'm looking to get a newer FVS318G now.
very poor performance
This device has a really poor performance. When there are more than 20 active connections the error rate raises fast! This router can be used if you are using a browser and nothing else. Don't try to use it for torrents or any data intensive jobs.
The webinterface is very slow and not reliable.
I had several low cost dlink & asus devices which had a _much_ better performance and user experience. I had never problems with them ( with stock firmware and dd-wrt ). I bought the rv180w because of the IPSec functionality which was missing on the other devices. Big mistake!
I will return the devices ( i bought two of them ) and replace them with old boxes running pfSense ( http://www.pfsense.org/ )
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