best vpn router for small business

I like the older second hand Snapgear/Cyberguard routers.

When released they were about $1000 and are VERY reliable with VPN acceleration.
Secondhand they are cheap.

If you buy a cheap brand new router, it is NOT likely to do VPN acceleration and you will get poor performance over the VPN regardless of how fast your net connection is.

If you want something new and uptodate, with good levels of other security services built in, go for a SonicWALL, small office unit to go for would be a TZ-210. Go for the Total Security version which will include services such as Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, IPS and IDS.
J

Depends greatly on how big a small business it is and how much you want to spend.  For around $100 I like Cisco Small Business RVS4000.  I have several of these running with site to site VPN's and they work great.  Never had a down moment.  This is a pretty low grade router compared to what is being mentioned above.  Basically I see 3 tiers for small business options.  First would be your linksys and Netgears.  But they tend to fail sooner or later.  I'd stay away from the Netgear Prosafe's completely.  Next is the RVS 4000 which is extremely fast and feature rich for the price tag.  Next i would get into the Sonicwalls.  The new TZ series are great and depending on what you want can range from $400 or so on up to $1000.  Be careful with Sonicwall because they often license things you need such as VPN and Nodes for internet use.  Buy one with Unlimited Nodes and enough VPN licneses.  

Basically I don't think yuou can go wrong with either the Cisco or Sonicwall but if you have a lot of traffic and more then 30 computers I'd go with the Sonicwall.  The TZ-210 is a great device.

Some speeds and Specs
TZ-210
Supports Unrestricted Nodes
» 200 Mbps Stateful Throughput
» 50 Mbps UTM Throughput
» 75 Mbps VPN Throughput
» 15 Site-to-Site VPN Tunnels
» 2 Bundled Global VPN Client Licenses
» 8,000 Concurrent Connections
» SonicOS Enhanced
» Gigabit Ethernet

If you a PPTP based vpn, so that your  authentication is tied into your AD username listing, then, I would suggest configuring an in-house windows server to handle the vpn connections/authentication - only because when you consider the  work required vs the end result you have a pretty decent return.

If you have a multi OS environment, all your windows boxes and mac boxes will have no issues, and your linux users, should be savvy enough to configure thier own setups.

**BUT**

Depending on your in house skills, I would consider building a VPN system from scratch. If you already have a working internet connection, and your setup allows for port forwarding to occur, I would suggest the following:-

smoothwall
monowall
pfsense
openvpn (raw linux - the internet is built on linux technology, don't be scared!)

I've put them in order of difficulty, (according to my experience) feel free to google them all and take the time to check out videos on youtube. If anything, it'll give you a better understanding of vpns, and gateways in general, which I feel will help you to make a better descision whichever way you decide to go

our environment is windows XP, Vista and 7.
since we do not have a VPN set-up currently, some of your comments seem second order to me.
i am hopeing to be able to set-up a hardware based VPN using a VPN enabled router that will allow me to run normal application SW such as MS Access over the internet on a remote computer.
i am assumming that the VPN router will be able to handel security issues without my having to run additional security SW on the individual computers.
one option that i am curious about is the Cisco WRV210 as a router that will enable what i am describing.
i am looking for comments and feedback on this plan.
thank you.

The WRV210 is the wireless version of the RVS4000 which is a great solution for the price.  The VPN is creating a simulated connection to the other router so that everything on both sides can talk to each other just like if they were on the same network.  So as long as your applications work in your Lan environment they will work through the VPN only slower.  Note the Site to Site VPN with this router works great.  Are you going to use one of these at both ends or is there already a device setup at the other end?

all of our locations currently use the Linksys WRT54G router.
my plan would be to replace these with the WRV210 router.
i assume that i can create more than one tunnel, thus allowing connefctions from more than one remote site.
i appriciate your comments.

I do not see a need to allow one remote site to get thru to another remote site, so that is fine.
the central hub model you describe is applicable to the environment i envision.
although i am very cognicant of the variability of reviews that are available via the internet and that individual ability is not factored into ones option to comment on equipment and its usability, do you see any reason to be concerned about the WRV210 unit?
since i have had a fine user experiance with the WRT54G product that is similarly priced.
in fact i have found Linksys/cisco equipment easier to use than Dlink or netgear.
thank you for your help!

the responce has stopped.
but the direction it was going was helpful to me.
thank you.

I believe this is a great device and have yet to have a problem with any of them I have deployed.  I have yet to have a down time or speed issues with them.  

Thank you for your opinion.
since this will be my first time setting up a VPN, is there any tutorial/documentation beyond what will come from Cisco that you recomend?
I have ordered two of the WRV210 units and will set them up in a test configuration first to debug the process.
any additional sugestions are appriciated.