Hey all,
Question for you!


Openreach are just in the process of splicing fibre on my street currently for FTTP to become avaiaible to me. As I understand it, BT retail now offer a 1Gbps asymmetrical FTTP service to residential users as of a month or so ago which I would snap up if offered over the default 330. (900Mbps+ down / 70Mbps+ up).

Currently I am still milking a 2860ac using BT's FTTC Infinity2 service (75Mbps down, 19Mbps up), which I've been very happy with. As I understand it, this router is not going to be in any way suitable as I beleive the firewall throughput is lacking by gigabit standards. Possibly only supporting in the 100-300Mbps range.

So after Looking at the Draytek specs, it seems the ONLY product that shows 1Gbps+ firewall throughput is the 3910. More of an enterprise class device and possibly a bit overkill for home use, especially with higher power consumption and noise, even if its in the attic.
Dropping £700 on a router would be perhaps tough to swallow, but doable. However I'm wondering a bit much if another product was fit for purpose. Especially as forums suggest the 3910's firmware is still a bit buggy after all this time.

I could look at other products but I've become accustomed to draytek products in my house and also utilise AP900s. So my question is, is this the only product I should consider from the Draytek range to connect to the new Openreach/BT ONT at 1Gbps?


As a bit of background. I utilise DHCP / dynamic DNS service / vlans and trunking a fair bit for segregated networks at home. I am also reliant on the firewall features and port forwarding. VPN, not so much. This being the primary reason why a BT home hub just wont do for me.


Thanks for your time.

You will probably get a bit more feedback from others and you have already seen the firmware thread. Just a note to noise: It is passively cooled, I have mine sitting in the living room.

It is pricey compared to other "standard routers", but in the enterprise space, Draytek routers are actually very good value. For a one WAN connection it seems to be overkill, but if the costs are not a real problem for you, it's still a good solution and gives you flexibility going forward.

I have mine running for a few days now and after a few teething issues it's doing a good job. It's not super mature on the firmware end, but I have good hope for it going forward and I don't mind tinkering with it at the moment.

FazzaUK2 wrote:

So after Looking at the Draytek specs, it seems the ONLY product that shows 1Gbps+ firewall throughput is the 3910. More of an enterprise class device and possibly a bit overkill for home use, especially with higher power consumption and noise, even if its in the attic.
Dropping £700 on a router would be perhaps tough to swallow, but doable. However I'm wondering a bit much if another product was fit for purpose. Especially as forums suggest the 3910's firmware is still a bit buggy after all this time.

I think you have answered your own question - at the moment with Draytek you have two choices - 3900 (out of production) but rock stable, or 3910 with buggy firmware.

If you don't mind being, what is in effect a beta tester whilst the bugs are ironed out, then the 3910 is terrific value for money. I work in production environments and cannot 'test' (for want of a better word) equipment, but the contribution from people that are currently doing this is terrific. That might sound selfish, but believe me I have 'tested' the 2952, and the 3900 when they first came out. The theme from Draytek is normally all of their products mature into reliable appliances. I have just placed an order for more 3900s for a business (new unsold stock), if that gives you an idea of my confidence in the 3910 being fixed in the very short term. Normally however, Drayteks performance in Enterprise is better than this, so perhaps things will move along quickly....

Unless you are running on leased lines, I wouldn't worry too much about headline 1Gbps connections. The fibre contention on GPON (aggregator contention 2.5Gbps / 32 and back-haul contention) for consumer products means you will not notice much difference. When XGPON finally roles out nationally (instead of a paid upgrade), then things might change, but IMHO most of the national 1Gbps FTTP services should really be labelled 'upto'. Some of the niche FTTP services are better at managing this.

If I were in your boat (and how I have my home setup), I would have two (or more) routers and split the connection gateways across both WANS and LANS and see how each perform - then you will have a measure of resilience when it locks-up right in the middle of something important, which from the comments I am seeing, takes a lots of manual intervention, time and patience, to fix. But for me reliability and resilience is more important than headline speed, and by directing traffic sources to different gateways can be more powerful than simple session/IP load balancing...

Hope this helps - all the best.

Perfect.
Thanks for your feedback guys.

Much appreciated

I'm probably a bit late to the party here, but have you seen the forthcoming 2927?
That appears to be aimed at 1Gbps connections in a small office / home environment.

I've been on a 1Gbps connection at home for a year now.
My humble 2860 has always been rock stable, but can't get more than 400mbps down and that's with pretty much everything switched off.
I did try a 3900 which was better on speed, but the IPSEC VPNs would get laggy after a few days and I had to reboot the thing at least once a week. For me the 3900 seemed buggy compared to the 2860.
I also tried a home built PFSense router which could cope with the 1Gbps speed but again was a bit fussy.

So for now I've been sticking with the 2860 for stability even though it means I'm not making the most of my connections.

I'm hoping the 2927 will have the stability of the 2860 but with the ability to make the most a 1gig connections.

Maybe I'll find out more tomorrow, hoping to join a Draytek webinar on the 2927.

Check this thread out, others are in the same boat and the 2927 might be an option for you.

https://forum.draytek.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=23679