Norton Core Router Reviewed

[thiggins]

Symantec thinks better security can sell its first Wi-Fi router, the Norton Core.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

 

[pete y testing]

thanks for the review time , im not surprised ,(removed) , as with IPS on other manufacturer /models the norton core just kills throughput , surely they cant be happy with those results and why would they even release it with such poor throughput and such poor wifi coverage esp from a 4 x 4 wave 2 ac router

i guess it competition may be the asus blue cave slated some time ago at ces , will have to wait and see how it stacks up

the norton core might have that WAF but without the grunt to keep DAF its just another also ran

 

[TheLostSwede]

thanks for the review time , im not surprised , synology couldnt get it right with its 2 previous attempts so its no shock this isnt up to speed , as with IPS on its previous models the norton core just kills throughput , surely they cant be happy with those results and why would they even release it with such poor throughput and such poor wifi coverage esp from a 4 x 4 wave 2 ac router

i guess it competition may be the asus blue cave slated some time ago at ces , will have to wait and see how it stacks up

the norton core might have that WAF but without the grunt to keep DAF its just another also ran

Sorry, but what does a Symantec product have to do with Synology??

And why would the blue cave from Asus be a competitor, it doesn't have any special security features as far as I've seen. It has some basic Trend Micro software, but so does a bunch of other Asus routers - https://www.asus.com/aiprotection/

 

[pete y testing]

Sorry, but what does a Symantec product have to do with Synology??

lol soz it was late , my apologies , but tim is right in its just another try hard in a market over flowing with great routers already

And why would the blue cave from Asus be a competitor, it doesn't have any special security features as far as I've seen.

as far as i know it doesnt have the bog standard aiprotect , it has the newer upgrade the adresses IoT , just like the lyra and brt-ac828 currently have

the norton core security features look about the same , the big thing with asus is you dont have to pay for that

 

[sm00thpapa]

Looks like an Engram from Destiny. Pretty cool looking.

 

[RMerlin]

I also found that you need a working internet connection for the app to access the router at all.

So if you misconfigured or need to change your PPPoE credentials, how can you do it?

EDIT: Just saw that only DHCP and Static IPs are supported? Uh...

 

[pete y testing]

how can you do it?

lol prob have to factory reset

 

[evil_mike]

I picked one of these up to test almost immediately after they were released, mainly because I was curious what the final product would look like. I worked for Symantec for a while and had friends in the beta program who gave it less-than-glowing reviews during beta. Unfortunately, my experience mirrors that of the review, and it wound up getting returned. I think the team behind the Core had good intentions, but their inexperience definitely shows with what they put out. I wish they would have partnered with someone like Netgear or Asus (i.e. a company with years of experience in this market) to bring Symantec's security engine onto their hardware platform.

The other issue I experienced was that one of my ethernet cables got stuck in the port because the space is SO SMALL. It took like 20 minutes for me to coax it out, which was extremely frustrating.

 

[RMerlin]

I wish they would have partnered with someone like Netgear or Asus (i.e. a company with years of experience in this market) to bring Symantec's security engine onto their hardware platform.

The odd thing is that Asus did work with Norton's engine a few years back. There are still a few traces of it in the firmware code. They eventually ditched it, and went with the Trend Micro engine, which I must say works very well, so it's possible that Asus evaluated both, and ultimately chose the TM one.

 

[System Error Message]

but is norton/symantech still a malware? At one point a few years ago norton/symantech was totally useless against a malware filled network at college that i figured i'd just brand it as malware which is around the time kaspersky redid itself and became really good and when avast av popped up and became really really good and was free, when having zone alarm firewall was very effective.

 

[RMerlin]

Symantec ain't bad. I especially like its reputation-based protection. Not sure how efficient their heuristic engine is compared to, for example, Eset's (which traditionally always had a great heuristic engine, but a slightly higher false-positive rate). I know that Norton claim to have added new mechanism back in September to better detect ransomwares through heuristic - it failed twice for a customer of mine during October...

This being said, modern malware is becoming so complex that it's becoming increasingly difficult for security suites to properly intercept some of them these days.

 

[System Error Message]

Symantec ain't bad. I especially like its reputation-based protection. Not sure how efficient their heuristic engine is compared to, for example, Eset's (which traditionally always had a great heuristic engine, but a slightly higher false-positive rate). I know that Norton claim to have added new mechanism back in September to better detect ransomwares through heuristic - it failed twice for a customer of mine during October...

This being said, modern malware is becoming so complex that it's becoming increasingly difficult for security suites to properly intercept some of them these days.

my firewall logic has a high false positive rate, but thats because google, facebook and the like tend to do suspicious things to you when you browse them, like probing you. I still question the effectiveness of this device against malware because from experience symantac didnt stop any of the malware that was commonly around.

 

[Trikein]

You mean the company that gets it's money from people who don't know better then to uninstall the AV that came with their bloatware made a bad router? You could push me over with a feather. I saw this thing at BestBuy and I couldn't help but to literally point and laugh. It was right next to the new Linksys "gamer" router. Manufacturers have no fear taking any junk, putting a shiney case on it and trying to sell it to "take my money" try hards. Like the Microsoft routers, hopefully these become nothing but a novelty.

 

[RMerlin]

Just found out another antivirus developer that decided to try their hand at router design:

https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8400/secure-sense-ac1750-wireless-router-review/index.html

 

[Internet Man]

Just found out another antivirus developer that decided to try their hand at router design:

https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8400/secure-sense-ac1750-wireless-router-review/index.html

Weird, The @FSecure_Sense twitter account started tweeting on 11/4/2015 and the product was announced on 11/11/15. I guess this explains why it uses the relatively old AC1750 spec.

Tweets suggest at least one delivery delay due to imperfect software. It does look like the device went on sale in the US some time around its December 2016 FCC approval date but many reviews of the device are coming out this month. Perhaps F-Secure is trying to piggyback on attention that Norton Core is getting by putting out review samples now and renewing their marketing efforts.

 

[surfnmadness]

The review as with other products sort of makes me think it is time for Tim H to do a review/overview of why external or not to do external antennas and how many is just too many.

Norton should have done a little more in house clean up on this one before releasing it.

 

[thiggins]

The review as with other products sort of makes me think it is time for Tim H to do a review/overview of why external or not to do external antennas and how many is just too many.

It's not feasible to do that review. Would have to have the same router with external and internal antennas.

 

[surfnmadness]

It's not feasible to do that review. Would have to have the same router with external and internal antennas.

Sorry to be going off topic of the Norton so much. Just looking at the funky internal antennas and board setup made me think of it.

A review over external or internal would most likely have to use something like a Cisco 2700/2800 or even 3800 series AP. They come in both flavors. Not so much looking at performance of the single vendor but looking at what signal advantage is there to external over internal antennas with today's radios. It seems like some vendors like Norton & Google want to hide their antennas while others look like a large dead spider on it's back.

 

[pete y testing]

the relevance of the internal v external is far less relevent today than it was back in the days of non beamforming and wireless N , prettymuch both internal and external antennas have reached and well past the max eirp level ) transmission power )

the only real way to get better coverage these days is to go down the mesh / dw route and achieve far better coverage or hardwire and use AP's

 

[sfx2000]

the relevance of the internal v external is far less relevent today than it was back in the days of non beamforming and wireless N , prettymuch both internal and external antennas have reached and well past the max eirp level ) transmission power )

the only real way to get better coverage these days is to go down the mesh / dw route and achieve far better coverage or hardwire and use AP's

I would agree - a well designed internal antenna solution will perform just as well as a bunch of dipole external antennas...

External dipoles are effective/cheap - and most consumers equate external antennas as better...

But then also consider that smartphone in your pocket or on the desk... those are all internal antennas - and 3G/4G/LTE is much more demanding of good RF performance...