Two Weeks with the DrayTek Vigor 2110Vn

AS WE (and by "we" I mean to speak only for the members of our household) drift further and further away from analogue media and traditional hardware setups, the occasional upgrade becomes necessary to accommodate real-world use. To put a slightly finer point on it: now that we've all but done away with our TV by converting our DVDs to movie files for viewing on our computers and an iPod Touch, and we've jettisoned a conventional telephone landline for VoIP, we've experienced a growing need for faster local file transfers and improved call quality. And the only way that's possible is by bringing our hardware—in this case, our router—up to date.

A little more than a year ago, I bought a DrayTek Vigor 2910VG. Unlike many of the routers I'd seen on offer from more established vendors like Netgear, Linksys, D-Link, Belkin, and so on, the DrayTek brought powerful VoIP options and layer after layer of highly customizable security features to a WiFi-enabled broadband router. With the 2910, I could sign onto six SIP accounts and configure a dial plan (by which, for example, pressing *1 would dial Mr. X's landline, and *2 would dial his SIP account), in addition to having a local WiFi network with the usual SSID hiding, WPA/2 password, and MAC filtering, as well as a firewall that allowed me to block data by either IP or content. Furthermore, among so many other little bonuses such as automatic dynamic DNS updating and UPnP, the 2910 had a USB port for printer sharing, storage media (accessible via FTP), or 3G modem support.

In short, it was an advanced little router that, when you stacked up all its features, was also very price competitive. I would have had to buy and configure multiple devices to replicate what it offered in a single package.

Yet that isn't to say that the 2910VG was without problems. For months it wouldn't connect to my Intel-based Macs and I had to host my WiFi network on a supplementary D-Link router. (However, the Canon MP600R printer I own, besides being a finicky ink-gobbling money pit, was for some inexplicable reason wholly incompatible with the D-Link, so I had to turn on the 2910's WiFi network whenever I wanted to print something.) Sometimes the router dropped SIP registrations. The USB storage function, when it finally appeared, didn't play nicely with the built-in FTP support in OS X. I always had to use a dedicated FTP client like Fetch or Transmit. And the router's GUI, not to mention the user guide, was often unclear about the point or proper setup of some functions, as it had apparently been translated from Chinese to English by the same people committing these errors.

A lot of these flaws were either corrected or improved over time, thanks to DrayTek's responsive and patient support team. The last firmware released before I boxed up my 2910VG and set up a 2110Vn in its place was version 3.2.2.2, and it brought my router to a point where I was 99% thrilled with it. The 1% by which it fell short of complete satisfaction consisted of those aforementioned niggles.

The DrayTek Vigor 2110Vn, while ostensibly offering all the features of the 2910VG along with WiFi Draft-n v2.0 support (that is, significantly faster wireless speeds) and superior VoIP quality, has negated some of those advances and is in many ways reminiscent of my first encounter with the 2910. So much promise, in other words, yet so much disappointment.

Spot the white router against the white backdrop.

You could say that the situation is now the inverse of what it once was. The Intel-based Macs running Leopard and Snow Leopard connect beautifully, but my sturdy though long-in-the-tooth iBook G3, with an 802.11b card that seemed light years ahead back in 2001, no longer connects to the password-protected WLAN. When the password is removed, it does manage to hop on, which is just enough success to make its lack of full functionality doubly frustrating. And the Canon MP600R has decided, as with the D-Link, that it doesn't like the cut of this particular WiFi network's jib, either, so it refuses to connect to the WLAN in any form, even though it "sees" the network just fine. (An e-mail to Canon support yielded the usual autoreply followed by inaction. This, incidentally, is why we're going back to Epson next time.) The 2110Vn, unlike the 2910VG, features WPS, which might simplify things if any of these devices actually supported it.

Benson—my buddy at DrayTek support, because by now we're on a first-name basis—says that they currently have no 802.11b Apple devices to test the incompatibilities but will work on getting one.

One thing that I should mention is that the 2110Vn allows the operator to manually switch the WLAN on and off (and, come to think of it, WPS too) using respective buttons on the side. This will conserve a bit of power when all the wirelessly networked computers are shut down for the night, or, in a predominantly wired setup, makes it easy to connect the occasional wireless client.

The 2110Vn offers a few other advancements over the 2910VG, the most important of which (for me, anyway) is its Hardware Accelerator, which the company variously calls a Speed Booster. This is a handy way of ensuring that data-hungry applications using a predictable port or port range have their packets prioritized. A similar feature called Quality of Service, or QoS, also available on the 2910VG, does more or less the same thing, except it works by reserving a percentage of the total bandwidth for a given application. As far as I can tell, the drawback to QoS' percentage method is that if, for example, you've reserved 25% of your bandwidth for downloading LOLcat pictures from Usenet, when you're not doing that, your bandwidth is still capped at 75% of its maximum capacity. The HA is nice because it can be set to "auto" mode, and will sniff out and give special treatment to what it deems to be important packets on its own.

Because aesthetics are an oft-overlooked feature in their own right, it's also worth noting that the 2110Vn is awfully nice looking. Unlike the staid, boxy shapes of most routers, DrayTek's 2110 series has a clean, appealing, Apple-like profile (more Apple-like, in fact, than Apple's own AirPort Extreme) with softly curved lines and a space-saving vertical orientation. There's a practical side to it: the vertical orientation increases its antenna height by a few inches, and it efficiently channels the heat upwards and away through a grill that runs along the entire top. As such, the 2110 isn't a device that makes our front hall look like Mission Control, and doesn't beg to be hidden away like pretty much every router we've ever owned.

At the time of this post, the 2110Vn still lacks support for USB storage, a feature that DrayTek nevertheless touts on several of its spec pages, which is disappointing. I'll try to post a follow-up when they get around to implementing it, with a particular focus on whether or not it beats the lackluster USB storage capabilities of the 2910 and if, say, large automated backups will be possible á la Apple's Time Capsule.

By and large, though, I'm relatively pleased with the 2110Vn. It suits the most urgent of my requirements. Yes, it's a royal pain not being able to connect the iBook and the Canon MP600R to the wireless network, and, yes, the USB storage that the box promises would be nice; but the speed of Draft-n means we can stream uninterrupted high-quality video all over the flat and LAN file transfers are completed in the blink of an eye. The Hardware Acceleration seems to be working, so the stutters we once might have had with video chats are history. Likewise, VoIP reliability and quality appears to have improved, too, so my SIP accounts stay registered and in most cases the call clarity definitively trumps landlines.

The biggest drawback—and DrayTek's marketing and distribution team really ought to hang its head in shame here—is that, for reasons that aren't altogether clear, shopping for DrayTek routers in the USA is a snipe hunt. To my mind, DrayTek is such a clear choice when hunting for a combination of VoIP, WiFi, security, and ease of use (save the awkward English of its manuals and GUI) that the company ought to have no trouble establishing a foothold in a market that caters only to the extremes of the simpleton or the IT expert. A Froogle search yields only two US distributors, DSL Warehouse and Guideband (which both look like they share a parent company; I also found BuyVoIPRouters.com during another search), and neither of them sells the 2110Vn, only its pared-down brothers, the 2110 and the 2110n. Rather than allowing the company to continue to sell itself short, potential US-based users might consider a trip to Amazon.de, which has the entire range of DrayTek routers on offer.

[My one-year follow-up to this review is here.]