Router Accomplished

After much research, which included me giving very serious consideration to just getting something Cisco based, I reluctantly purchased a Draytek Vigor 2820n router. Contrary to what you might think, I could careless about its 802.11n support or whether or not I can get a wifi signal halfway down the street. No, I had a very simple goal - I no longer wanted to find my router needing to be rebooted every day or so. Thus far, this dream has come true.

While I would be first to say that this is way too much for the casual user as there are setting that can confuse many users easily, overall I am happy to report that this appears to be the best, most stable router I have ever used. After running this router ragged for nearly two days now, I am happy to say it stays cool on its own in a hot room, has AWESOME QoS settings and allows me to take wireless security as far as I might like. Doing enterprise level authentication is totally doable with this beast.

Some of the coolest features I will never likely use include:

- Support for up to 75 LAN users at once.
- Load balancing between DSL and my FiOS provider - I am fine with FiOS exclusively at this point.
- 3g Modem support - cool, but not needed by me.
- Being able to block practically anything from Java to preventing users from using executables. This router has one of the best Web content filter I have ever seen. It can even block web page ads down to blocking items that might be seen as creating productivity issues.
- Set the channel scanning to auto or use site survey statistics for recommendations.
- Wireless Distribution System built in. Radiate your family in style by setting up a router set up as a repeater in every room!
- Strong WPS setup. Netgear among other routers already allow for this kind of physical proximity type support, but it is cool nonetheless.
- Same router, four different SSID’s, each with their own security settings. So potentially, I could do WPA2 on one while doing WEP on another. Best of all, I can actually isolate the wireless station itself from the rest of the LAN - nice for home hotspot sharing! You can isolate either members (wifi clients) or LAN clients (wired) from selected SSID users. In a word - awesome.
- VLANs - Basically setting up a virtual LAN over great distances might be one application. Either way, this router supports it.

All of this said, the one thing that I think will turn most people off from using this outside of the fact that you need to be a networking power user to make heads or tails out of their user interface is the fact that reports indicate 802.11n support is pretty lame with this router. It works, but I have read the range is pretty poor. This being said, as a wireless G user, I am finding it does quite well with my wireless devices. In a two story home, I have the router in my office while my wife enjoys the laptop down stairs on the couch with no problems at all.

Would I recommend this to the typical gamer, SoHo user or anyone outside of the IT realm - nope. Entirely too much to get lost with here. Would I recommend this to the 802.11n user? Yes, with the understanding that I have not tested its wireless N abilities and reports on the matter are not too good. What about users who are mostly LAN based, but want to have a decent wireless setup along with a lot of daisy chained switches to be connected to this router - absolutely. While it sports only one gigabit port with the others being slower, a gigabit switch cures this easily. Due to my end goal being stability and security, this router was a great find. It’s is pricey, but my goodness it is stable.