Who says routers have to be big, heavy and hard to set up? Cisco Systems, which certainly produces its share of such devices, also takes a smaller, simpler approach with the RV 120W. Designed for the small office or branch, the RV 120W packs a remarkable number of capabilities into a 6-inch square just over an inch thick.
The RV 120W combines Internet routing with firewall, VPN and Ethernet switching for wired and wireless users. The box can support up to 1,000 concurrent sessions with a maximum NAT throughput rating of 95 MBps and VPN throughput of 25 MBps.
More on performance later.
Security includes IP-based and MAC-based access control, SPI firewall, port forwarding, RADIUS, HTTPS and X.509 v3 certificates, among others. Password length can be set to between five and 64 characters (eight is the default), and administrators also can control password length and complexity enforcement. Separate session timeout values can be set for administrators and guests.
Of course, the RV 120W supports static routing and RIP v1 and v2, as well as Cisco's inter-VLAN routing, a Layer 3 capability without the expense of a Layer 3 switch. This capability permits traffic to cross VLANs when necessary, while keeping other local traffic local to its intended subnet, freeing the router and minimizing traffic congestion. The four-port switch in the router also supports Quality of Service, giving customers the option of segmenting traffic by port, application, Differentiated Services and Traffic Metering, which stores packets in buffers to help prevent network overload.
Setup And Testing
As is typical of many Cisco configuration tools, the initial setup "wizard" runs only on Windows. We chose to skip this step and perform the initial configuration directly with a browser as would most resellers, who often crack the plastic in their shops to perform setup, configuration and testing ahead of a client installation. In such cases, all that's needed to access the unit's HTML-based setup pages is an Ethernet cable and a browser.
Setting up the RV 120W could not have been easier. Then, again, perhaps it could have. Apple's Bonjour zero configuration protocol is enabled by default, but wasn't mentioned anywhere in the documentation. If it had been, testers could have avoided the step of setting up a laptop on the same IP subnet as the router. No biggie; the process took just a minute or two.
Backing up a step, if the plan is to use the Cisco RV 120W as an access point, just plug it into the network, give it power and it's ready to go. Any wireless computers that join its network will immediately have access to any network resources the router is attached to, including the Internet, if there's already a gateway.
A word of caution: By default, the RV 120W is an active DHCP server, so beware of conflicts when plugging it into an existing network.
To gauge performance, testers connected a MacBook to a NAS device through the router and ran the Xbench performance benchmark. Tests were repeated with wired and wireless Ethernet. In wired tests, we measured a maximum transfer rate of 77.68 Mbps. This was for sequential uncached reads. On wireless tests, sequential uncached writes delivered the maximum transfer rate, which was 54.08 Mbps.
For its solid performance, versatility, ease of setup and Cisco's reputation for quality hardware and strong channel support, the CRN Test Center unhesitatingly recommends the RV 120 W router, which lists for $229, for its intended small-business market. And for its street price of around $139, the RV 120W also would make a good choice for the average consumer, as long as they don't mind getting more features than they could possibly know what to do with.
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