Re: RV320 - Possibly the WORST RV router ever produced

Matthew Konkol · ‎09-14-2017

Has anyone found a stable version of the firmware that actually has all the features working?

We have been using this device since it was released and have yet to find a stable release of the firmware that has all the features that work. We have about 20 of these in production. 18 are on Comcast connections. We have tested various engineering releases and every public release version of the firmware and there seems to always be a bug that affects us somehow.

Beyond frustrated with this device. If money wasn't an issue I would just replace them all out. We hoped this device would be a great replacement for the End of Life RVS4000 devices but it has turned into the vain of our existence.

as an fyi, we have found issues when using snmp, spi, load balancing, etc. snmp is the main cause of all the issues. spi absolutely kills throughput on the device.

Glenn Martin · ‎09-14-2017

Hello Matthew:

I'm the Community Manager/Moderator for the Small Business Support Community. I'd like to understand more about what specific issues you're having with your RV series router. I do see SNMP being one of the issues, are there more? have you reached out to Tchnical Support? If possible, please email me and we can see how best to address your issues.

Thanks

Glenn

Glenn Martin · ‎09-14-2017

Hello Matthew:

I'm the community Manager for the Small Business Support Community. I'd like to understand more about what specific issues you're having with your RV series router. I do see SNMP being one of the issues, are there more? have you reached out to Tchnical Support? If possible, please email me and we can see how best to address your issues.

Thanks

Glenn

Dredy · ‎09-15-2017

Hi,

I purchased a RV340 and I experienced some of Your problems.
First of all the SNMP service: there seems to be no way to make it work.

Have You received any suggestion or tip in order to make it work?

Regards,
EDL

Matthew Konkol · ‎09-15-2017

I don't think they have an answer for it. Every time they think they have it fixed we will upgrade a couple of devices outside our lab and we will start to get complaints about time out and slow bandwidth. we have so many technician hours in this device it is ridiculous. This device has really forced us to abandon the RV series of router going forward but until EOL of these devices we will have to support the ones we have.

Dredy · ‎09-15-2017

As I saw (when unboxed the device, without any Firmware upgrade and SNMP worked for a while) the device is Linux based, instead of Cisco IOS.
Cheap devices with many problems?
Not so good for a brand like this...

Dredy · ‎09-15-2017

Matthew, do You know a serious replacement box for the RV320?
I need a dual WAN Router/Firewall (for backup and active/active scenarios). ASA 5506-X is a Firewall and is not designed to support load-balancing (but You can set static routes...). The question is: is it suitable for a Wan backup system?
Thanks i.a.

Matthew Konkol · ‎09-15-2017

we have moved away from Cisco for Small Business Routers

jonrodr2 · ‎09-19-2017

Hello,

My name is Jonathan and I am part of Small Business here at Cisco.

I do apologize for all the trouble that you have expirienced with this RV320. I completely understand your frustation, however, would you allow us to help you?, if so we will need more information about the problem that you are stating, as I read, you have tested several firmware versions but still have problems.

So this made me think that you must have some old case numbers that we could take into account for this problem, if you do, please share the information so we can take a look, you mention problems with SNMP, and other issues as well, but we don't have any details about what exactly is happening, if you mean that it simply does not work, we can always create a case, so you will receive the tech support from our staff and we can gather the relevant information that is needed so that we can adress this issue, please if you are facing issues what we need from you and any other customers who might be facing the same situation is to open a case and work together to find a solution.

As a suggestion it is highly recommended to open a case as we will work faster in finding a solution for your issue, I know that this has comsumed a lot of time from you, but we definetly need detailed information to find a solution, if you want, you can share the topology and details of your network and problems, and feel free to open the case also.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/web/tsd-cisco-small-business-support-center-contacts.html

Thanks.

mra · ‎10-10-2017

Hi.

I am currently preparing a brand new RV320 for my SMB customer. The target is to connect his remote office laptop to his company network. What he basically needs is just a simple remote connectivity (i.e PPTP server + windows client). I am familiar with earlier cisco linksys RV042 SMB routers. As well known, those have proven to be very reliable boxes.
To my dissatisfaction the current cisco RV320 does not come even close to reliability and robustness of what the earlier model used to have.

I have sat behind my pc for many many hours and experimented with most of the recent box firmware releases and noticed that there just is not any particular release which would fix all meaningful bugs (on one version certain things work, on another version they do not).
At the end I just got fed up and flashed the box with the latest available firmware (v1.4.2.15 2017-08-14, 15:59:13).
I just wonder, should I still wait for a new, all-problems-fixed version, or just give up and return the box to seller.

My finding below are based on v1.4.2.15 firmware release.

When you log in to box for the first time, your browser faces a certificate invalid error and you can not log in to box. This is not something you want when you are in a hurry. Tweaking the browser security settings helps - if you know what to do... Please make a simple list of steps / instructions how to get started with a new box...

this is what comes up:

This site is not secure
This might mean that someone’s trying to fool you or steal any info you send to the server. You should close this site immediately.

Your PC doesn’t trust this website’s security certificate.
The hostname in the website’s security certificate differs from the website you are trying to visit.
Error Code: DLG_FLAGS_INVALID_CA
DLG_FLAGS_SEC_CERT_CN_INVALID
Go on to the webpage (not recommended)

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Several strange entries appear in the system log. How to get rid of these?
Additionally, for me accurate time stamps in log entries are a must, now they are not accurate. It is typical that tens and tens of log entries have the very same time stamp despite when those things actually have occured:

2017-10-10, 11:27:56 Network Log NSD FAIL WAN[1]
2017-10-10, 11:26:31 Kernel kernel: wrong ip[0],not_list[0]
2017-10-10, 11:26:31 Kernel kernel: ip[0.0.0.0] mask[0.0.0.0]
2017-10-09, 21:13:48 Kernel kernel: wrong ip[0],not_list[0]
2017-10-09, 21:13:48 Kernel kernel: wrong ip[0],not_list[0]
2017-10-09, 21:13:48 Kernel kernel: wrong ip[0],not_list[0]
2017-10-09, 21:13:48 Network Log NSD FAIL WAN[1]
2017-10-09, 21:13:48 Network Log NSD FAIL WAN[1]

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WAN1/WAN2 inbound load balancing does not work according to my findings. My certain customers want to combine broadband capacity of two ISP:s. This works perfectly in earlier RV models (e.g. RV042).
Despite the selection smart link backup / load balance, the box seems to function always in a link backup mode.

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System summary often displays WAN Connected but Inactive. Internet connection works, however. What is the problem here?

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DHCP IP MAC binding works and DHCP gives static IP addresses as configured. But for some reason the local DNS can not utilise these device names in lookups

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In Setup / Network the box requires something in the domain name field. Otherwise local dns lookups do not work. Why is this? Forget the ISP requirement.

PS. Sorry, I don't have time to find old case numbers. Perhaps somebody in cisco support could look into these.

BR
Markku

Lee Cox · ‎10-10-2017

This is an interesting read for me as I just switched back to my RV320 router after not using it for a couple of years. I ran pfsense for those years but now my RV320 is painting web pages faster now than my pfsense on my old Xeon processor. Somewhere along the line of updates for pfsense I picked up a slow down.

But I have to confess I don't use a router very hard cause my layer 3 SG300-28 switch does most of the local network stuff like DHCP and other stuff. The RV320 really only handles NAT for me but it seems real fast now.