Draytek or FitzBox for Site2Site VPN

[David Wade]

Until recently I had

1. a Draytek 2862 on FTTC in the UK
2. an old 2820 at my holiday home.

The internet in my holiday home is 300Mb FTTP with CG NAT on a Huawei EG8145V5 router. The 2820 connects to the EG8145V5 via 100mb LAN cable and then back to the 2862 via a VPN.

I recently upgraded my UK setup to Zen FTTP 500/75 and telephony from Voipfone. I installed the ZEN Fritz!Box 7530AX router and set up the

2862 as a so called "DMZ" device. I configured VOIP on the 7530, so I now have:-

Draytek 2862 <-- DMZ/NAT --> Fitz!Box 7530AX <-- Internet --> EG8145V5 <-- Draytek 2820

Now the 2820 seem to be a bit of a bottleneck, so I was wondering if I would be better replacing it with a newer Draytek, or as they seem cheaper and more widely available a Fritz!Box 7530.

I can see the Fritz!Box does not have a local DNS. Are there any other features I might miss?

Any other points?

Dave

[John Rumm]

The 2820s are getting on a bit now. They also don't really have the throughput to cope with FTTP. Even the 2830 runs out of puff on its ethernet WAN interface at about 95 Mbps. A 2862 will manage about 400 Mbps with hardware acceleration on. The 2865 will do 950Gbps on WAN2.

If you don't need the xDSL port, then the 29 series are probably better future proofed on FTTP since they have 2 x 1GBPS giving the option of FTTP load balancing or failover... (or any other WAN device that presents on ethernet (or wifi for that matter))

While I manage a fairly large number of Draytek boxen, I don't know enough about the Fritz box to comment.

[David Wade]

I just turned on Hardware Acceleration on the 2860. It does not seem to have improved throughput.

I can't see me needing the xDSL port. I'll have a look at theses...

Of course. Thanks for the response.

Dave

[John Rumm]

It is only a marginal gain on straightforward routing - but more noticeable on VPN throughput. I think on my FTTP my 2862vac can manage about 380Mbps without acceleration, and can just about get to 400 with it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

All I can say is that the Draytek I have is simply the best router I have ever owned.

[Bob Eager]

I had a 2860 for about ten years, no problems at all (apart from the very early days, which they fixed quickly with two fhrmware fixes).

I replaced it with a 2866 as I needed more grunt, and that has been completely trouble free.

[David Wade]

Thats about where I am now but having done some tests I think I really need to upgrade both Drayteks that would really mean buying 2 x 2866 which seems quite expensive. For now I am going to try a second Fritz!Box. Lets see how I get on.

Dave

[Andy Burns]

WebUI is pretty clunky and, at times, non-obvious ...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh, absolutely, but its streets ahead of some other crap I have dealt with. At least it (mostly) works.

[Bob Eager]

I ended up getting the 2866 and four AP903s - that was a bit painful on the wallet!

The house is big and has numerous dead spots. And one neighbour has their router right next to the wall.

[David Wade]

Not good. I have some AP902s which may also need replacing. In the UK not too many dead spots, but in the Holiday home the walls are around 2ft/60cms thick so there are more deadspots that areas with coverage....

Dave