Testing
For testing I simply installed Lockdown 2000 and let it monitor any connection attempts. I then shared out a few folders to see if the router blocked NETBIOS names as it claims. After several weeks of use, not one person had connected to any shares that I had available or connected at all to my computer.

One interesting thing I found when trying to telnet into the router from the Internet was that it came up with the Raptor Firewall Secure Gateway.

Perhaps this is the same award winning Firewall software from Axent Technologies?

Conclusion
Congratulations to NETGEAR on a great product. The RT314 performs superbly. It provides an easy web-based setup for less experienced users who just want to connect the router up and have it work in as few steps as possible. For the more advanced user, it provides great features like packet filtering, static routing as well as the ability to have incoming ports redirected.

The only thing that could potentially be a problem to some users could be the ability of only being able to configure 10 incoming ports. It all depends on which applications you run. On my system I ran the basic Internet applications like ICQ, AOL IM, and Counterstrike without having to open any ports at all. If you do video conferencing though, you will probably have to open up some ports. Just make sure to find out which applications that you have require incoming ports, and that will help you determine if the NETGEAR RT314 will be right for you. For the average user, 10 ports should be more then plenty and should not be a problem.

The integration of a 4-port switch is great, because it allows for maximum utilization of your network bandwidth by segmenting each computer that it is attached to, to the proper speed. For example, if you have 4 computers; and 2 of them have 10Mb cards and the others have 100Mb cards, unlike with a hub which would send at the slowest speed connection on the network, a switch will provide a 10Mb transfer speed to the 10Mb computers and a 100Mb transfer speed to the 2 100Mb computers, efficiently using your bandwidth.

I would highly recommend this to anyone that is looking to share multiple computers on a single broadband connection or looking to secure their network from the outside world.