Summary: I've search everywhere and it seems that the BEST firewall is (drum roll...................)

Answer: Whatever you think.

I'm guessing that firewall technology these days is so competitive that the only real difference between firewalls is ease-of-use.

I've used Netgear FVS-318 for years and all my clients had them before they where my clients.

I have yet to find any substantial 'Hack' for a Netgear firewall yet.

My only complaint would be interface considerations.

I had two Netgear FVL-328's that would NOT interface completely with a Cisco endpoint router.

Oh sure they worked together for several days, but the Netgear firewall would lockup and need rebooting.

For all I know the Cisco is so proprietary that it only truely works with it's own kind.

I've used Sonicwall as well without any problems.

I don't mean to sound cynical or sold-out on Netgear, I'm simply tired of all the sales-pitches these days.....

Q. I would like to know if anyone else can REALLY see any reason to spent over $200 on a firewall appliance for home or business?

Summary: I have read some of the other reviews and did not have any of the slowness that others have complained about. I have a 10 MB pipe from my cable company. I have a PowerMac G3, PowerMac G4, Two Laptops, Two printers, Two desktops and a Server running off of the router with no slowness issues reported. I don't know what version of the FVS318 that they have but version 3 has a faster processor which should help with the slowness described. Just make sure you know what you are buying. Also make sure you upgrade the firmware to the latest version for more functionality and stability. I have been using this router for about a week now and couldn't be happier. Haven't tried the VPN setup yet so no comment on that at this time. Previously used D-Link router and IPCop Linux based firewall.

Summary: I had no trouble installing this product. My beef is that it has decreased my network performance significantly. Without the FVS318 in my network scheme, I was getting 4 Mbps form my cable connection, but with this in place, I get about 1 Mbps (i.e. 75% drop in bandwidth) even when I am the only device logged on to the network. I had expected a slight performance hit, but nothing like this.