Hi Folks

Sorry I've not been on the forum for ages, but I've installed a few Draytek 28xx routers (at various SOHO sites) and they all just worked (well, one 2820 failed, but that was just a hardware fault; the on board DC-DC buck converter expired, but hey, everything breaks, eventually).

At home, I'm using Sophos UTM and a V120 (V2) on a Sky ADSL2+ broadband and it all works very well. I noticed that when I used a Sky Sagem router (so double NAT; once in the Sagem and again in Sophos) my download speeds were more than 10% higher (when testing using the various broadband speed checker sites) so I did a little more investigation and the Sky Sagem reports Rx sync at (approx) 15800 Kb/s, whereas the V120 reports sync at about 14200 Kb/s (I inserted an Ethernet switch between the V120 and the firewall's LAN port, so I could then view the V120 settings on a laptop attached to that same switch).

My line is about 2 Km back to the TE and the loop loss reports (on all devices I've tried) at about 35 dB (and the SNR's at 6 dB). I've tried a few Broadcom based units (TP-Link, Billion, Sky Sagem and others) and all sync at more than 15500 Kb/s, whereas the V120 is down at 14200 Kb/s, so it is quite a significant performance hit. I've tried all the firmware builds (to see if any particular modem code worked well) and there are small variations, but nothing to get too excited about; three of them were as shown below:

332201 reports 35 dB loop loss and syncs at 14102 Kb/s
310811 reports 43 dB loop loss and syncs at 13971 Kb/s
3211201 reports 35 dB loop loss and syncs at 14222 Kb/s

After a www dredge, I found that Draytek [allegedly] use different devices in these modems, as listed below:

Draytek 120 V1 uses Infineon
Draytek 120 V2 uses ADI (that's the one I have)
Draytek 120 V3 uses Lantiq

So, my question is does anybody here know whether it's worth me buying a V130? I know you can telnet into it and tweak the SNR, but SNR tweaking aside, I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts on whether the Lantiq based device would generally work better than the ADI based device, when used on a Sky ADSL2+ circuit (which seems to work best with Broadcom based devices). I'd happily buy a V130, but if it's just going to be the same (and likely consume more power) then it would just be a waste of money (which would be better spent on fine red wines).

I don't care about a small speed hit (to enhance reliability), but in reality, download speed tests when using the Sky Sagem were about 1.8 Mb/s faster than when using the V120, so that is really quite large a hit (and the Sky Sagem was totally stable at that higher sync rate).

If anyone has any thoughts on any of the above, I'd be very grateful to hear them (even if they're not very nice thoughts)!

Kind regards
Briain

PS I also tried a 2830 directly connected to the ADSL line and it sync'd at 14500 Kb/s; slightly better than the V120, but still a good bit shy of the Sky Sagem's 15800 Kb/s.

Lantiq is the same as Infineon , just a new name.

AdrianH54 wrote: Lantiq is the same as Infineon , just a new name.

Personally, I'd have thought all these vendors would have built devices with fairly similar capabilities (designed to best handle the various modulation schemes) so to be honest, I now wonder whether all these www-based comments (about getting best results only when using the same brand of devices as your ISP uses) are the whole story. I'd have thought that the difference (or at least some of the difference) between my V120 and the other devices I tested, might be down to Draytek setting the parameters extremely conservatively in order to maximise reliability and minimize errors. Having just spent a little while trying to find out where the truth resides, I am still completely in the dark as to whether it's the device vendor, the age of the device chosen, Draytek being conservative, or a mixture of all these factors.

Draytek list several firmwares (each with different modem optimisations) but I could not find any documentation on what each firmware was 'optimised' to do, so it appears to be an area that's shrouded in darkness, so I just wondered if anyone here could shed some light onto all this, or if not, whether anyone here has compared a V120 to a V130 on a broadly similar line loss to that of my own.

It would be great if I could just slot in a V130 and get somewhere close to the 10% sync rate increase that I know can be achieved on this line (even something more like 5% could make the spend worth considering), but before actually buying a V120 to try it, it would just be comforting to know if that's even a vaguely possible outcome, or whether it's likely to perform identically to my existing V120.

Bri

From experience of Draytek routers, yes, the throughput is often less than other brands, Draytek seem to err on the side of reliabilty over maximum speed.

Business and professional users want and need a stable connection.

I use the Vigor 130 for my FTTC connection , I am on an ECI (Lantiq/Infineon ) cabinet and see maximum speeds and a constantly stable line.

When I was on ADSL2+ and later LLU I had both Infineon and Broadcom router/modems and saw no difference at all on my line.

Firmware is on the UK site , the others you see on the draytek.com are for different countries .

Hi

I appreciate (and applaud) that Draytek take a conservative approach; we need stability, not speed. In fact, when I ran a 2820 and had a broadband issue (a few years ago), I temporarily used a more conservative code to enhance its stability (until Openreach eventually resolved the problem) and that worked very well; it eliminated the numerous drops per hour that I was experiencing (and the resulting issues with Draytel ViOP registration).

There are numerous firmware builds for both the Draytek router series (and also for the modem series). These firmware builds contain different modem codes (see the release notes) but as far as I am aware, there is no documentation to detail the merits (or aims) of each version, so we are somewhat left in the dark.

Focusing on the 130 and 120 modem series, Draytek support advised me to try the various builds at ftp://ftp.draytek.com/Vigor130/Firmware/v3.7.9/ (for the 130) or ftp://ftp.draytek.com/Vigor120%20V2/Firmware/v3.2.8/AnnexA/ (for the 120), with them being fully aware of me using a UK ISP. If you look at the V120, there are 9 modem codes, and from what I've tried, they provide slightly different sync rates, but on my ADSL line, the differences are pretty marginal (see the three examples in my first post).

With reference to my first paragraph, it's really cool that we have these options (though it would be even cooler if they were backed up with some documentation) but when I used a Sky Sagem router (so a double NAT) the performance was over 10% better than when using a 2830 connected directly to the PSTN (and the V120 is even 'slower' than the 2830). I ran my network with the double NAT for a couple of years and it was flawlessly stable, so if that is the case, then clearly a >10% sync rate hit is unnecessarily conservative. So, what I'm saying is that if it is a Draytek decision to make their modems extremely conservative, then there should also be an option (as in one - or more - modem codes) to provide a slightly more 'aggressive' set of modem parameters (and some documentation ) but if it isn't that, then I guess it must be down to the chip vendor inter-compatibility (as in it being best to match your modem hardware to the DSLAM hardware).

Either way, with any Broadcom based routers that I've tried, the sync and download rates are more than 10% higher than with a V120 (and with no reliability issues), so it would be cool to know if a V130 might help get some of that lost performance back (or not).

All the best,
Bri