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

by Cisco

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.5 inches ; 1.3 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002I7288
• Item model number: RV042
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,165 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
  • #67 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Networking Products > Routers
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

A secure network connection tying your company to the world is the backbone of your business. You need a combination of performance and security to help keep your employees connected to the assets they need to keep your business productive. The Cisco RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router is a proven solution that delivers highly secure, high performance connectivity at the heart of your small business network. Two connections to a service provider help support business continuity, while high capacity VPN capabilities enable other offices and employees working remotely to connect to your network.

The typical configuration for the RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router. View larger

Delivering highly secure, high performance connectivity for your small business

Provide Remote Access to Employees

Increase remote employee productivity through secure connections to your business network via Virtual Private Networks (VPN). The RV042 delivers high capacity and high performance IPsec VPN capabilities, including support for up to 50 QuickVPN tunnels for remote client access.

Simple Setup and Administration

Intuitive, browser-based device manager and setup wizards get you up and running quickly. The easy-to-understand interface lets you monitor and adjust settings easily, from setting up remote access to content filtering and extensive activity logging.

Featuring a buil-in 4-port Etherenet switch for additional flexibility. View larger

Strong Security

The RV042 provides strong security with proven stateful packet inspection (SPI) firewall and hardware encryption. The built-in firewall also features protection against Denial of Service (DoS), Ping of Death, SYN Flood, Land Attack, and IP spoofing, and sends email alerts for outside hacking attempts.

Create up to 50 access rules, and employ powerful content filtering including static URL blocking and keyword blocking. Control filtering of Java, cookes, ActiveX plugins, and HTTP proxies.

Performance to Support High-Bandwidth Applications

The Cisco RV042 Dual WAN VPN Router delivers proven, highly secure, high-performance connectivity to the Internet at the heart of the small business network to help employees stay productive. Redundant connections support load balancing for higher performance and contribute to business continuity, while a built-in Fast Ethernet switch connects devices in the office. High capacity IP Security (IPsec) VPN capabilities connect other offices and employees working remotely to files and data just as securely as if they were physically connected to the network. Other business-class security features, including available cloud-based web threat protection, help keep the network and business assets safe.

Dual WAN Ports

The RV042 features dual fast Ethernet WAN ports, configurable for Smartlink backup or load balancing. A built-in 4-port fast Ethernet switch provides additional flexibility for connecting devices in your office.

What's in the Box

Cisco RV042 Dual-WAN VPN Router, CD with Administration Guide and QuickVPN client software, Quick Install guide, AC power cable, Ethernet cable.

Complete Your Business Network with These Cisco Products

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The Cisco WAP4410N Wireless-N Access Point. Connect Wireless-N (802.11n), Wireless-G (802.11g), and Wireless-B (802.11b) devices to your wired network, the WAP4410N makes it easy to provide wireless access in the workplace.

The Cisco WVC2300 The Wireless-G Business Internet Video Camera with Audio provides top-of-the-line image and audio quality in low-light (and with a separate IR lamp, no-light) situations.

Which Cisco Small Business Router is Right for You?
	RV110W	RV120W	RV220W	RVS4000	WRVS4400N	RV042	RV082	RV016
Wireless	b/g/n	b/g/n	b/g/n	No	b/g/n	No	No	No
WAN Ports	1 - 10/100	1 - 10/100	1 - 10/100/1000	1 - 10/100/1000	1 - 10/100/1000	2 - 10/100	2 - 10/100	7 - 10/100
LAN Ports	4 - 10/100	4 - 10/100	4 - 10/100/1000	4 - 10/100/1000	4 - 10/100/1000	4 - 10/100	8 - 10/100	13 - 10/100
Max VPN Connections	5	10	25	5	5	50	100	100
VPN Speed (Mbps)	5	25	90	2	2	59	97	97
NAT Speed (Mbps)	90	100	800	800	800	100	200	200
QoS
IPv6

Product Description

Network connections are the backbone of business connections. One of the Cisco Small Business Routers, the RV042 Virtual Private Networking (VPN) Router supports up to four wired and 50 off-site connections. The latter allows users to connect into your network with secure access to your files and intranet. The RV042 comes with dual Internet ports that can serve as a failsafe system for 24/7 network uptime, or as a secondary connection to a separate Internet provider. Whether they're used for backup or speed boosting, the router's networking hardware will keep bottlenecks away from your network, period.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

The manufacturer commented on the review belowSee comments

104 of 109 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Firmware for RV042 lags the RV082..., January 17, 2005

By 

R H (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN (Personal Computers)

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.)

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.

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 Files\Linksys\Linksys 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!

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!

Instructions for QuickVPN and setting up the RV042:

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.)

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

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 Files\Linksys). 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 manufacturer commented on this review(What's this?)

Posted on Jun 7, 2011 3:22:22 PM PDT

"Cisco Small Business Team" says:

(MANUFACTURER)

Hi R H,

Thank you for the positive feedback, and detailed review! We are glad to hear you are overall satisfied with your RV042! We appreciate the review.

Thank You,
Diana
Cisco Small Business Team

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The manufacturer commented on the review belowSee comments

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent, but Has Typical Linksys Shortcomings, October 3, 2006

By 

Hermin Hollerith, Maker of Tacky Wreaths in t... (Ann Arbor, MI and Generally Man of the World) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN (Personal Computers)

This is a typical Linksys product where the hardware design is excellent, software design is mediocre and documentation is lacking.

This router is perfect for home, SOHO or (very) small office use. The router is an extremely fast device and the firewall very capable. It also does a very good job of IPSEC and PPTP VPN access and has no problem supporting multiple connections (which is something my DD-WRT enabled WRT54GL could not handle).

The Linksys QuickVPN software is frustrating to get working. If will renumber your internal network whenever someone uses the software. So be aware that you must number your network in the 10.x.x.x address range even though the router comes out of the box numbered as 192.168.1.1. There is only one place I found this little bit of information and without it, I would have never figured out why QuickVPN doesn't work. QuickVPN only permits you to usurp the default gateway of the machine to your remote network. However, once it is working, it's very fast.

The router does not support DNSMASQ. For larger businesses, this isn't a problem because ostensibly they would have the resources to run their own name servers. But for home or SOHO users, this represents a problem because you have to manually enter the target nameservers. This may not sound like much of a problem until your ISP changes nameservers and then your connectivity will start to fail on name lookups. As anyone who has been faced with such a situation, the symptoms can point to any number of issues.

Configuring IPSEC is not a trivial matter for the uninitiated. If you purchase this router with the intention of using it for IPSEC and this is your first time doing it, buy yourself a book that covers IPSEC. While the Linksys web interface is adequate, it doesn't help you figure out what is wrong. If you understand how it works, then you'll be able to troubleshoot problems and get this feature to work. It *does work*, and it works very well with my Macbook and my Windows machines.

Router supports syslog support or emailing of logs and alerts. Works great with PPPoE, and connects quickly.

I gave this product 3 stars because the shortcomings are noticeable. It's a great little firewall and router; it's very fast, quiet, small and does a great job. But it lacks because of documentation, the glaring omission of no DNSMASQ and a web interface that is tricky to maneuver.

If you do not need client-to-gateway IPSEC tunnels and want a much quicker client solution, look at the Linksys RVL200 SSL VPN. That box was my first choice, but only supports gateway-to-gateway VPNs (which won't work on the Mac).

 

The manufacturer commented on this review(What's this?)

Posted on Jun 10, 2011 11:22:05 AM PDT

"Cisco Small Business Team" says:

(MANUFACTURER)

Hi Hermin,

Sorry to hear you experienced some issues with the RV042 router. We're continually working to improve both the user interface and documentation for a better user experience.

Regarding the difficulties you experienced configuring IPSec, the administration guide may have the information you need. You can find the documentation here: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/routers/csbr/rv0xx/administration/guide/rv0xx_AG_78-19576.pdf. Or, you may find the help you need on the Small Business Support Community (http://www.cisco.com/go/smallbizsupport).

Thank you for your feedback!

Diana
Cisco Small Business Team

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good small business router, October 14, 2004

By 

Ogi (Newark, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cisco RV042 4-port 10/100 VPN Router - Dual WAN (Personal Computers)

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.