I replaced a BT "Smarthub" with a 2860 over a year ago as the Smarthub was totally unreliable needing regular physical reboots. The 2860 is rock solid. But the first thing I did is do a speedtest before and afterwards. The Smarthub was managing about 15Mbps (from memory) whereas the 2860 was getting about 13Mbps. However, after a few weeks, the 2860 regularly got up to the same speed as before. Does one just need to leave the 2860 to work out the optimal settings?

I don't think this is really something the Draytek is "doing". The modem part only dials in, negotiate settings for the line and then the router authenticates etc. You could try with a separate V130 modem, this would handle the ADSL/VDSL line, you would then connect it to WAN2 of your Draytek and put the default BT credentials there

But we could try ADSL2+ instead of VDSL, what do you think? Just want to see how much you get with ADSL2+

Can I use the smarthub as a modem and connect it to the draytek to manage the network?

I don't think it can be in modem mode, someone else may confirm, but unless there is a "bridge" mode in the settings, it is not possible

Now, what you can do is keep the BT Hub for the broadband, put the Draytek behind, assign it a static IP and as DMZ in the BT Hub, then all traffic will be redirected to it. The BT Hub will be managing the connection

Spellbinder wrote: I don't think it can be in modem mode, someone else may confirm, but unless there is a "bridge" mode in the settings, it is not possible

Now, what you can do is keep the BT Hub for the broadband, put the Draytek behind, assign it a static IP and as DMZ in the BT Hub, then all traffic will be redirected to it. The BT Hub will be managing the connection

No, I don't think there is a modem mode either but you can use it in router mode and connect the 2860n to the hub's switch. However, I'd recommend not doing this because the reason we got rid of the BT hub was that it kept crashing and had to be restarted.

Maybe the new ones (smartHub 6 here) are more stable?