Derrick
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- Joined
- Nov 22, 2010
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The Vigor2700 is a great choice for a small office environment looking for fast, reliable, wireless LAN connectivity in a decentsized office environment. It’s easy to set up and boasts excellent Internet security management.
DrayTek’s new Vigor2700 ADSL2/2+ router has one particular old-school feature I especially like on my broadband connectivity hardware: a power switch, at the back, between the AC socket and ‘Line’ input. Not that you’re ever likely to need this switch in the way that my reminiscing might imply, as built into this Vigor router is a very robust firewall as well as WPA2 to ensure the security of your WLAN environment.
In fact, from a security perspective, the Vigor router includes a lot more than an administrator is likely to expect from a consumer-orientated router, including sound traffic tracking and analysis.
All manner of ADSL modulation and encapsulation are supported as well, although we only really required G.DMT.
If a newer infrastructure becomes available, you won’t need a new router if you have this unit installed already. All of the configuration options and embedded security applications are accessed via a very user-friendly eb-managementinterface, and we really appreciated the fact that the unit didn’t require a restart for every little change we made to be applied.
On the WLAN front, the Vigor2700 uses a proprietary technique called “Packet Overdrive” to boost your 802.11g connection speed to about 40% over conventional speeds. However, our SiSoft Sandra WLAN test showed it to be doing the maximum, which the Intel Pro wireless card attached to my laptop could do… until I installed the Vigor610 USB WLAN adapter supplied with the package.
Speaking of which, also supplied with this review kit was a high-gain antenna, which ought to give this unit even more appeal.
For the initial tests, we ran it with just the standard aerial attached, so that we could gauge the improvement this small investment might make later.
For some reason, however, the company only includes XP drivers with the USB WLAN card, but Vista drivers are available from DrayTek’s Website. I moved the USB WLAN unit to my desktop test bench to avoid any CPU hang-ups, and ran SiSoft’s WLAN test again.
Throughput was better, running at the same rate as G+ adapters from competitors: around 3MB/sec, which was close enough.
I then tested the antenna. In ‘standard’ form, the Vigor2700 was already a step ahead of my regular WLAN router, holding the signal strength at three bars even in my lounge, which is separated by several brick walls from my home office.
Even outside, with an entire house and a pool between the laptop and router, the signal strength was at two bars. Using the additional antenna, in the lounge I had maximum-speed access to my network. Even on the other side of the pool, the signal strength was at three bars – which is superb.
Finally, there’s the aesthetics of the unit. Its wavy design wouldn’t look out of place even in full view in a highly trendy office environment, and its colour-coded connectors are quite literally idiot-proof. And if all else fails, the old oneinch firewall is just a flick of a switchaway...
DrayTek’s new Vigor2700 ADSL2/2+ router has one particular old-school feature I especially like on my broadband connectivity hardware: a power switch, at the back, between the AC socket and ‘Line’ input. Not that you’re ever likely to need this switch in the way that my reminiscing might imply, as built into this Vigor router is a very robust firewall as well as WPA2 to ensure the security of your WLAN environment.
In fact, from a security perspective, the Vigor router includes a lot more than an administrator is likely to expect from a consumer-orientated router, including sound traffic tracking and analysis.
All manner of ADSL modulation and encapsulation are supported as well, although we only really required G.DMT.
If a newer infrastructure becomes available, you won’t need a new router if you have this unit installed already. All of the configuration options and embedded security applications are accessed via a very user-friendly eb-managementinterface, and we really appreciated the fact that the unit didn’t require a restart for every little change we made to be applied.
On the WLAN front, the Vigor2700 uses a proprietary technique called “Packet Overdrive” to boost your 802.11g connection speed to about 40% over conventional speeds. However, our SiSoft Sandra WLAN test showed it to be doing the maximum, which the Intel Pro wireless card attached to my laptop could do… until I installed the Vigor610 USB WLAN adapter supplied with the package.
Speaking of which, also supplied with this review kit was a high-gain antenna, which ought to give this unit even more appeal.
For the initial tests, we ran it with just the standard aerial attached, so that we could gauge the improvement this small investment might make later.
For some reason, however, the company only includes XP drivers with the USB WLAN card, but Vista drivers are available from DrayTek’s Website. I moved the USB WLAN unit to my desktop test bench to avoid any CPU hang-ups, and ran SiSoft’s WLAN test again.
Throughput was better, running at the same rate as G+ adapters from competitors: around 3MB/sec, which was close enough.
I then tested the antenna. In ‘standard’ form, the Vigor2700 was already a step ahead of my regular WLAN router, holding the signal strength at three bars even in my lounge, which is separated by several brick walls from my home office.
Even outside, with an entire house and a pool between the laptop and router, the signal strength was at two bars. Using the additional antenna, in the lounge I had maximum-speed access to my network. Even on the other side of the pool, the signal strength was at three bars – which is superb.
Finally, there’s the aesthetics of the unit. Its wavy design wouldn’t look out of place even in full view in a highly trendy office environment, and its colour-coded connectors are quite literally idiot-proof. And if all else fails, the old oneinch firewall is just a flick of a switchaway...