Netgear ProSecure UTM10 review

Netgear's ProSecure STM family of gateway security appliances offer an impressive range of features but are priced beyond the majority of cash-strapped small businesses. Its latest ProSecure UTM appliances aim to take all the key features of their bigger brothers and offer them at an affordable price to even the smallest of businesses

There are three models in the family with the UTM10 on review representing the middle ground. Below you have the UTM5 and above it is the UTM25. The model designations indicate the number of users each one can support but bear in mind this isn't a finite limit as the physical abilities of the hardware are the only restrictions. For the UTM10, Netgear actually recommends up to 15 users.

The UTM10 replaces your existing security router and along with a standard SPI firewall you get a whole heap of other features. For your money you also get IPS, anti-virus, anti-spam, web filtering, IM and P2P controls, IPsec VPNs and even SSL VPNs.

The subscription fee included in the price shown here activates every service plus all updates and support for the first year and has no user restrictions. Prices do vary hugely between the various vendors but after some online digging we found the UTM10 complete with a one year feature bundle at Broadband Buyer for less than 400.

This little desktop box offers four Gigabit ports for LAN duties with the fourth capable of supporting a DMZ if you want to offer up a server to the internet. A fifth Gigabit port is provided for the WAN connection but if you want Internet connection failover or load balancing then go for the UTM25 as this has a couple of WAN ports.

All the UTM appliances function only as transparent gateways so installation is a cinch. For testing we dropped the UTM10 between the lab network and our Internet link and were up and running in minutes. All you do is point a web browser at the appliance's default LAN address and follow the wizard-assisted set up.