DrayTek Vigor 2110n review

For the past few years, DrayTek has topped the tables in our Reliability & Service Awards, and in 2009 readers gave the firm six out of six for reliability, speed and range.

We've no way of testing for long-term reliability in the Labs, but our speed and range tests confirmed the opinion of our readers. At close range (two metres away, with file server connected to the router via Ethernet), we recorded an average speed from router to laptop of 86Mbits/sec, and 57Mbits/sec from laptop to router. That's about as fast as we'd expect a single-band router with only a 10/100 Ethernet connection to go.

In our long range tests, the Vigor performed solidly too. The test laptop was placed 40m away from the router this time, with a wood wall and double glazed window in the way, and we achieved a transmit rate in our tests of 48Mbits/sec and 56Mbits/sec in reverse.

The speeds in both locations were solid enough to maintain dropout-free Full HD video, and the Vigor sailed through our soak test. It maintained a glitch-free VoIP call, smooth iPlayer playback and internet radio playback, while we carried out simultaneous file transfers over SSL VPN, FTP and SMB.

The feature set is unimpeachable. There's built-in support for VPN dial-out, and a subscription-based website-blocking feature to bar websites of a particular category.

A USB port on the rear supports storage devices, printers and mobile broadband dongles, and the http administration pages allow in-depth control. Even ADSL users are catered for: in fact, buy the identical 2710n instead, with an all-but identical feature set, and you'll save money.

It's a very good product and one that, based on the experiences of thousands of PC Pro readers, should be reliable too. It may not boast the interference free benefits of a dual band router, but otherwise it's hard to fault.

Author: Jonathan Bray