Draytek ADSL wireless - worth it?........WTB

[Chunkers]

In the market for a new wireless ADSL router and have had a couple of Draytek ones in the past and they are excellent.

Questions is : why pay £200 for something you can buy for £50 unless there is a real benefit. Which are the solid wireless ADSL routers with good networking features (throttling, firewall , VoIP, printer port and ADSL 2/2+ would be nice)

My current Netgear DG834G is no comparison in terms of reliability and features so I'm getting rid (actually looking forward to binning it)

What do you think / would you recommend?

NB : No Netgears - I've had enough of them

Cheers!

Chunkers

[excalibur2]

In the market for a new wireless ADSL router and have had a couple of Draytek ones in the past and they are excellent.

Questions is : why pay £200 for something you can buy for £50 unless there is a real benefit. Which are the solid wireless ADSL routers with good networking features (throttling, firewall , VoIP, printer port and ADSL 2/2+ would be nice)

My current Netgear DG834G is no comparison in terms of reliability and features so I'm getting rid (actually looking forward to binning it)

What do you think / would you recommend?

NB : No Netgears - I've had enough of them

Cheers!

Chunkers

I'm thinking similar to you but on a different level.........why should I buy say a £50 modem/router when my binatone/semi router bought boxed and new at a bootsale for £5 works ok.

BTW Although the guy had about 20, I don't think they were knocked off as they stopped making them well before.

[Agent]

Questions is : why pay £200 for something you can buy for £50 unless there is a real benefit.

Im more than willing to be proved wrong, but I doubt that you will find a ADSL router for £50 that has the features of a Draytek. The only exception probably being the WRT with some form of Linux firmware.

If you dont want all the features of a Draytek it makes sense to go for a cheaper model. There are plenty of solid, cheaper routers about.
Draytek are reliable though, come with ace support and are just generally nice to work with

Have a look on Ebay - they are much cheaper on there

[Zak33]

What Agent said really.

Draytek are very good for VPN's,,,,mine logs in10 times faster than myold netgears.

I also use my Port Throttling on my draytek to keepgame pings safe when Sair's got Ebay on

But....I also suggest that some of the uber cheap routers are pretty good.

I dont like Netgear anymore....too many died on me

[kopite]

Drayteks are brilliant routers.

I have been using a 2600 on my home line for 2 years now and its been great.

The new speedtouch routers are pretty good though. Speedtouch 585 is really easy to set up and it is possible to do most of the stuff a draytek does only some of the things do require a bit of hacking.

[Chunkers]

Thanks to all for their comments.

I'll probably buy another Draytek or Ill end up regretting it, a 2800VG?

Cheers everyone

Chunks

[Taz]

I have a 2600We, 2700G and 2800G all in active service - all are excellent ADSL routers in my opinion.

One thing to bear in mind: there have been known issues with the 2800-Series Drayteks on long and noisy ADSLMax phone lines. Draytek support have finally recognised this as an issue and are now asking customers for more information to try and get to the bottom of these issues. This was one of the reasons I bought the 2700G to replace my 2800G on one of my lines. The 2800G is now operating faultlessly at another property that is very close to the exchange - it just didn't work well at my main home which is a very long way from the exchange - I was very disappointed with this as it's not a cheap bit of kit.

This is from the Draytek support forums:

This message is posted on behalf of DrayTek:

--

Dear Users,

We are trying to collate information from users who are experiencing frequent disconnections on their ADSLMax (or possibly regular ADSL) lines with a Vigor2800. We have a 'survey' of 10 simple questions which we can send you. This has already been sent to users who reported the issue but unfortunately (or fortunately) some users no longer had the problem, or it was original misdiagnosed etc so the engineers don't have many 'examples' to work with.

If you get just the odd disconnection (e.g. once a day) then that's considered normal and can be due to BT/ISP maintenance or many other issues. We're interested in spontaneous and more regular disconnections.

Therefore, if you do have such a problem, please get in touch with info @ draytek.co.uk and they can send you the questionnaire. It should take just a few minutes.

Thank you in advance.

n.b. that dept. is collecting the info for the engineers only; they don't have support/technical people there, but your info will be passed on.

In all other respects, particularly featureset, it's hard to beat a Draytek. However, I agree with the comments above that you don't need a Draytek if you won't be using all of the features.

[Chunkers]

One thing to bear in mind: there have been known issues with the 2800-Series Drayteks on long and noisy ADSLMax phone lines.

Thanks Taz, I am a fair distance from the exchange and will definitely hold off / consider an alternative purchase - great info and perfect timing - thanks!

Chunks

[kopite]

The new firmwares seem to have fixed that issue though.

I work for Zen internet and we had a lot of problems with BT and draytek regarding this issue. The issue was with the draytek routers dropping every 5 minutes and not resyncing at a higher rate.

[Taz]

Thanks Taz, I am a fair distance from the exchange and will definitely hold off / consider an alternative purchase - great info and perfect timing - thanks!

Chunks

No probs, I just didn't want you to spend all that money and be disappointed. I was fortunate that I could re-use my 2800G at another property. The 2700G doesn't appear to have these issues (which don't affect every 2800-series user, by the way). Draytek use a different chipset in the 2700-series (TI I think) compared to the Broadcom chipset in the 2800-series routers (again, to the best of my knowlegde).

The 2700G is also a lot cheaper than the 2800G (with slighty fewer features) and it holds on to a long and noisy line far better than the 2800-series.

[Taz]

The new firmwares seem to have fixed that issue though.

I work for Zen internet and we had a lot of problems with BT and draytek regarding this issue. The issue was with the draytek routers dropping every 5 minutes and not resyncing at a higher rate.

Yep, that's exactly the problem that I was having (and many others who posted on the Draytek support forums). I did try the latest firmware (2.7.1, including Y12, D57 and E67 derivatives) to no avail, unfortunately.

[Agent]

Woah, that's weird.

I had the exact same issue - sometimes it would drop after seconds though. It all seemed to happen at around the time the DSLAMs were upgraded.

But I tried with 2 Drayteks (2600 *2), a 3com 812 office connect and a generic USB one, so it was defo the line / exchange.
This was on UKOnline, and I just couldn't get the problem sorted so I went to cable.

Drove me mad!

[Chunkers]

Well I'm stuck now, the sage advice here and a bit of further reading on SEG forums has put me right off the Draytek 2800VG and the 2700 doesn't support VPN (which i need for work).

So.... the features I am looking for are :

- VPN
- Wireless with decent security (WPA)
- 4 port switch with good network features (DHCP with device IP mapping for my TiVo)
- A decent firewall / security
- VOIP would be nice
- Rock solid performance unlike my current Netgear

Any thoughts or ideas? I am currently looking at the D-Link Dsl-2740b

Ta

Chunks

[Agent]

http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2800.html

2800 series support VPN

http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2700.html

2700 supports VPN pass through

edit - ah sorry, didnt read it correctly. Ignore me

[Taz]

Well I'm stuck now, the sage advice here and a bit of further reading on SEG forums has put me right off the Draytek 2800VG and the 2700 doesn't support VPN (which i need for work).

So.... the features I am looking for are :

- VPN
- Wireless with decent security (WPA)
- 4 port switch with good network features (DHCP with device IP mapping for my TiVo)
- A decent firewall / security
- VOIP would be nice
- Rock solid performance unlike my current Netgear

Any thoughts or ideas? I am currently looking at the D-Link Dsl-2740b

Ta

Chunks

How far are you from your exchange? If you're not far and you have a 'clean' phone line then the 2800-series will work very well indeed. What is your line attenuation and SNR margin at the moment? If you've got low attenuation and a decent SNR margin then there is no reason why a 2800-series would not be the perfect router for you. There are plenty of people who are very happy with the 2800-series. Unfortunately, there are also quite a few people for whom the 2800-series routers have been a bit of a disaster.

The points I made only apply to _some_ users on long and noisy lines.

[Chunkers]

What is your line attenuation and SNR margin at the moment?

SNR Margin
Down 6 Up 23 dB

Line Attenuation
Down 37 Up 23 dB

Data Rate
Down 8128 Up 448 kbps

I am 6 miles from the exchange AFAIK and am with Zen ;D

Chunkers