Dear Draytek,

After much messing around and waiting I have finally given up. My Vigor 2800VG that I bought because it was advertised as ADSL AND ADSL2+ compatible is simply not up to the job of connecting to ADSL2+.

If I had known it would not work with ADSL2+ when I was searching for a new router, I never would have bought it. Unlikely for me, I fell for the blurb that said it would work.

Having messed around with many many settings, resets, calls to my ISP I have finally given up. That and the fact that Draytek seems incapable of fixing it... a product that they advertised as compatible.

So, I've just bought me a new router that is thankfully working perfectly with my ADSL2+ line.

So long Dratek.. I would like to say it's been fun, but it hasn't.

I have a Draytek Vigor (got sucked into the blurb) and guess what?

It doesn't do what it says on the tin.

Even worse, they put up a User Forum like this and can't even be bothered to even monitor it, it seems (let alone engage the odd "Draytek Aware" moderator to offer any backup and support.

I can't wait to tell all my customers what brand NOT to buy.

Golden rule, Draytek, win over one and he might get you a referral.

But lose one and he (I) will slate your products mercilessly.

It wouldn't be so bad if they offered a part exchange for a 2820. I must admit the 2800 work flawlessly on ADSL.. just doesn't work on ADSL2+!

Come on Draytek.. how about offering your customers a PX ?

The 2820 may work with ADSL2+ (i wouldn't know since i'm still stuck on ADSL) but if you want or need to have anything more than bog-standard home router features the 2820 isn't for you (and if you only want home router features you might as well save yourself £150 and buy a cheapo router).

I've had my 2820VN for almost 18 months now and, despite several firmware upgrades, basic features are still broken.

The firewall doesn't block established connections, making any scheduled firewall rules completely useless.

Firewall filters can't be chained together, so you can't restrict all computers from a site then restrict a subset of machines from an additional site without also adding the rules from the first filter to the second. This makes every filter increasingly complex and unmanageable.

The scheduling feature doesn't work correctly. You are supposed to set a start time and a duration for the rule but it seems to become inactive over night (perhaps at midnight?), requiring two schedules per rule. This may only have started with firmware 3.3.2.1.

As of the latest firmware there seems to be something wrong with DNS too, since first thing in the morning i'm seeing a lot of ads on web-servers that the DNS server the router is supposed to use to resolve addresses blocks. After about 10 minutes of browsing this problem seems to disappear so i'm not sure what's going on.

All in all the 2820vn is an incredible disappointment. The hardware is good but the firmware is an absolute travesty and i am constantly amazed that it makes it past Draytek's QA team.

The 2820vn is billed as a business-class router but can in no way be considered suited for that role. I don't think i'll ever buy Draytek again, and my next router will probably be one i build myself based on pfsense .