I wanted a low-cost VPN solution and had been debating purchasing the Cisco 501 PIX firewall and Netscreen’s lowest end 5GT VPN router (which costs $450 + maintenance/support contracts) before discovering this bargain model. Tom’s Networking Hardware has a good review about the RV082 holding up with Netscreen’s 5GT VPN router in performance tests, which pretty much convinced me to get this Linksys brand. I use the RV082 for our main office and the RV042 as a client in our remote office in mainland China, so I can’t say for sure that an RV042-RV042 solution works. Note: If you intend to purchase this model and use it for an international location, however, you do need to purchase a separate 220 volt/1000 mA/12 volt adapter, since the unit only comes with a 110 volt adapter. (Linksys apparently has yet to provide a universal power adapter for this product line.)

Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN

I thought the RV042 would be exactly the same as the RV082 except with 4 ports instead of 8. However, I found that the firmware is still a bit behind the RV082 (the RV042 also does not come with an internal PPTP server, though this PPTP server is still not compatible with the Win2000/XP PPTP client). One major benefit of the RV082 is that it comes with a free VPN client called QuickVPN (downloadable in the same section where the RV082 firmware is located). Unlike other Linksys VPN routers, the RV082 using the QuickVPN client avoids the trouble of needing to follow a 16-page procedure for configuring a Win2000/XP client to access the VPN.

Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN

The RV082 firmware (v1.1.6.3) contains an “HTTP Service” option that must be enabled to provide QuickVPN support. The QuickVPN client appears to retrieve some VPN server information through https:// requests, which isn’t evident unless you look closely at the wget_error.txt located inside the C:Program FilesLinksysLinksys VPN Client directory. The RV042 firmware (1.3.1) does not yet support this feature, but their current BETA version (v1.3.3) does (downloaded from linksysinfo.org). Linksys has yet to officially release this firmware, so be forewarned!

Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN

The RV units may also be compatible with other VPN brands. We had been using the really flaky Symantec 200 VPN units and managed to get one of the units to negotiate a IPSEC tunnel with the RV042 and RV082. You can use the VPN log feature to see if the negotiation works. Enable the keep-alive option in the Advanced features to help maintain a persistent tunnel too!

Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN

Instructions for QuickVPN and setting up the RV042:

Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN

1. Upgrade to the latest firmware version (1.3.3 beta off Linksysinfo.org. Additional note: There are reports of problems with the the 1.3.6 beta so have stayed away from using it.)

Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN

2. Inside the “Firewall” section, enable the HTTPS service. Make sure to Save Settings too.

Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN

3. Inside the “VPN” section, click on the VPN Client Users. Add a username and password that will be used for the QuickVPN Client. Make sure the user that you will be using is selected as Active.

4. Make sure that your client’s NAT/firewall has IPSEC passthrough capability turned-on. If you don’t, you may see that the QuickVPN client successfully connects but freezes at “Verifying Network”.

5. Your client’s IP subnet should not conflict with the other remote networks (i.e. Your client subnet should be 192.168.2.0 if your remote networks use 192.168.0.0 or 192.168.1.0)

6. Verify that the IPSEC services is running on your Windows machine.

7. If you are running Windows XP SP2, you need to disable the Windows Firewall. You may also see the connection established but QuickVPN get stuck at the “Verifying Network” message.

A good place to debug your problem is to look at the error logs in the wget_error.txt in the directory where the QuickVPN client is installed (i.e. C:Program FilesLinksys). The wget program apparently tries to connect via HTTPS to the RV042/RV08 to obtain VPN server information. If the connection is successful, you can see several .conf files downloaded into the same directory.

One another note: Both the RV042 and RV082 have a second WAN port for load-balancing, but I’ve seen enough reports to stay away from using this feature until Linksys manages to resolves the issues in the firmware.

The main reason I bought this router was for its dedicated DMZ port. What good is this? Since the RV042 has three discrete ethernet controllers (one for the WAN, one for the LAN, and one for the DMZ) you can easily create routine rules that allows a machine to be visible to the internet AND keep your LAN safe.

Many low end home routers have a DMZ-like facility, but this really just opens up a single port to a computer within your LAN. The problem with this is that if the “DMZ” computer gets compromised it is on your LAN! That means other machines could potentially get compromised.

This is not the case with the RV042. You can create routing rules that explicitly state what connections are allowed and what connections are disallowed. For example, any computer on my LAN can access any computer on my DMZ, however my DMZ can not access my LAN. This allows for excellent security.

The router supports the syslog protocol which allows you to send its system logs to a centralized logging system. This is a very common configuration for UNIX systems.

The one thing I would change about the RV042 is to give it 1000BaseT ports. You can simply add a Linksys SD2008 to accomplish this.

Strengths:
Great little unit for the high tech home. Load balanced Internet connection options are great. Decent firewall. Good PnP.

Weaknesses:
Make sure that you upgrade to Firmware Version: 1.3.7.4. The VPN for earlier versions is a little complicated to connect to from xp/2000 Client.

I am using the RV042 and a RV082 to connect an office in the US with an office in East Europe. The VPN is working perfectly.
- Excellent performance.
- Very reliable.

I spent a while looking for a good VPN router. They seem to be really hard to find. I don’t know if it’s because they are generally difficult for the average user to set up and use or if all of the consumer-grade VPN routers really are such low quality. I’ve been very disappointed with Linksys products in the past, and I wasn’t really considering Linksys from the beginning. But I looked around at several sites with user comments on various VPN routers, and the Linksys RV042 was the first one I found that had more positive reviews than negative reviews.

It’s more expensive, to be sure, but I think it has been worth the money. I have had absolutely no trouble with it in the first month that I’ve had it. Setting up a VPN seems to be a fairly complicated affair for the uninitiated, and I don’t know how this one compares with any other. I bought VPN Tracker from Equinux Software (I’m using a MacBook) to use as the VPN client. They provided step-by-step instructions for setting up the router and the software, and it has all worked very well.

Speed seems to be good. Download speed (router to remote client) was close to the advertised speed of my cable service, so the router doesn’t appear to be slowing things down that way. I haven’t had a really good test of upload (remote client to router) speed yet, but the files I have uploaded moved pretty quickly.

One thing that really surprised (and pleased) me was an unadvertised feature: secure (https) remote management. Other routers, specifically from NetGear, advertise this feature, but Linksys did not. I knew that remote management was possible, but I didn’t know I could connect via secure http until I started setting it up. That was a nice surprise! Of course, if you’ve got a VPN set up, you can manage the router “locally” through the VPN. But if you’re not using a VPN, it’s nice to be able to get into the router management knowing that your user name and password are secure. The only limitation on the secure remote management is that you can’t change the management port like you can with the “unsecure” remote management. They don’t really tell you that, and it took me a few minutes to figure it out. But that’s a small thing.