Introduction

We live in an increasingly connected world, and in this day and age, people expect access to the resources on their office networks—instantly and easily, no matter where they are.

For employees who need to connect to their office computer from home, remote-control services such as GoToMyPC Corporate and LogMeIn are popular, affordable, easily-deployable solutions that require no investment in hardware.

Many applications, however, require Layer 3 network connectivity that GoToMyPC Corporate and LogMeIn are not designed to provide. For these applications—whether it's an employee synchronizing email directly with the corporate mail server or companies connecting their branch offices together—a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is the answer.

A VPN creates a private network using the Internet. Traffic over the Internet is encrypted through the use of VPN communication paths called "tunnels," and security policies ensure that only authorized users have access to the private network. You may ask, "are VPNs difficult to set up?" Well, they can be. As for the "are they expensive?" question, the answer is not really. You can set up a LAN-to-LAN VPN for well under $200.

This review will take a look at NETGEAR’s FVS114 ProSafe VPN Firewll 8, which supports up to eight LAN-to-LAN or remote-client VPN connections.