Draytek Vigor 2850 Speed Problem

Hi,
Not sure if this is the right forum but : -

I have a 80/20 mbps broadband connection. When I do a speed test, I consistently only get 45 mbps downstream. This is tested over several days.

The problem occurs if I use the Draytek as the modem, or if I use the BT Openreach as the modem, and the Draytek just as a router. The sync speed is fine (79812). And yes it is consistently fine, no dropouts. This has been confirmed by my ISP after days of monitoring.

If I swap the 2850 out for my cheapo TP-Link router, I get FULL speed (typically 75 mbps).... Again, consistently.

I've tried re-flashing the latest firmware and a full factory reset, but no difference.

I'm on the verge of shelling out for a new router, because this just does not make sense. How can my cheap router outperform my Draytek speed-wise?

Don't know if anyone has any experience of Draytek..

Thanks!
Mark.

There's one more test you should do. You can plug your computer directly into the Openreach modem and set up a PPPoE connection and test using that.

I think that's the first thing you need to do as this will eliminate the Draytek as a source of the problem. I'd be very surprised if the Draytek was limiting you as I've use the 2850 for several years on FTTC without any issues.

Who is your ISP?

wirerd or wireless?

Wired, cat 7.

My ISP is Zen Internet.

The thing to remember is, I've substituted another router *directly* in place of the Draytek. If the Openreach modem or line was at fault, the substitute router would also exhibit the problem.

The substitute router is a cheap TP-Link £35 router.... and the speed test sits beautifully at around 75mbps hardly wavering.

I'm at a loss. I generally know what I'm doing with all this; I've been a freelance software engineer for nearly 18 years, and I've written firmware in C for proprietary tracking devices (which was a challenge back in 2003!). Just trying to get across that generally when it comes to technical stuff and testing, I know what I'm doing.. I hope

But I still can't make a Draytek router work at full speed

any QOS, try a full factory reset; after testing the PPPoE connection with PC/MAC.

QoS all off, done factory reset several times and started from scratch.. no change

I may have found my answer.

Looking at the chart in the link below : -

http://www.draytek.co.uk/support/5

It seems to say the maximum NAT session throughput is 50Mb/s - assuming that is megabits and not megabytes...

Edited by deleted (Fri 05-Jan-18 08:49:11)

You omitted the link in your post ?

This has been a known bug for a while, that we have seen on 2850s for some time.

Basically from what I recall with ours and clients, it's something to do with QoS that limits the speeds, even when off. You need to enable it, increase the max throughput, save and then it should be ok. Even turning QoS at that point seems to maintain the throughput.

We reported this to Draytek 2 years ago, but they never seemed to be bothered to fix it. They released the 2860 less than 6 months after 2850 was launched.

In reply to a post by MarkOSSL:

It seems to say the maximum NAT session throughput is 50Mb/s - assuming that is megabits and not megabytes...

Did you link the correct table?
The table doesn't appear to state any information for the 2850 or give a "maximum NAT session throughput". The only throughput figures given are for firewall and VPN.

In reply to a post by aquiss:

This has been a known bug for a while, that we have seen on 2850s for some time.

Basically from what I recall with ours and clients, it's something to do with QoS that limits the speeds, even when off. You need to enable it, increase the max throughput, save and then it should be ok. Even turning QoS at that point seems to maintain the throughput.

We reported this to Draytek 2 years ago, but they never seemed to be bothered to fix it. They released the 2860 less than 6 months after 2850 was launched.

I've tried enabling QoS and setting the Bandwidth but it seems to make no difference. In fact, even if I set it to a rediculously low bandwidth, it makes no difference whatsoever. This makes me wonder if QoS is doing anything at all!

If you could point me in the right direction that'd be much appreciated.

In reply to a post by craski:

In reply to a post by MarkOSSL:

It seems to say the maximum NAT session throughput is 50Mb/s - assuming that is megabits and not megabytes...

Did you link the correct table?
The table doesn't appear to state any information for the 2850 or give a "maximum NAT session throughput". The only throughput figures given are for firewall and VPN.

Sorry, it was late last night! And didn't have my glasses on.

However, there's an entry for 2862 which is a later model, and just after "Max. Firewall Mb/s" there's a NAT section "NAT Sessions (000's)" and then below it a Max. Mb/s** entry. It says 50 for the 2862Vac.

Still haven't found my glasses so hopefully that is correct

I understand the Draytek table differently.
i.e. The figure for NAT Sessions (000's) is not directly related to the VPN throughput in Mb/s.

Martin from aquiss looks to have the most credible explanation thus far.

In reply to a post by craski:

I understand the Draytek table differently.
i.e. The figure for NAT Sessions (000's) is not directly related to the VPN throughput in Mb/s.

Martin from aquiss looks to have the most credible explanation thus far.

I agree.. I'm hoping he will respond to my queries.

I have played with QoS and cannot seem to improve the performance. I must be missing something..

Ok, I'm working from memory a bit here, but I know we went exactly through the same issue of this 50Mbps.

Firstly Bandwidth Management -> Bandwidth Limit, we had to enable this and set really high settings for the TX and RX. Then disable it. Also untick both boxes for Auto and Smart bandwidths control on that page.

Then in Bandwidth Management -> Quality of Service, we enabled it on the WAN being used and set really high speeds, above the line limits, so in our case 100Mbps

That seemed to kick our 2850s into life beyond the 50Mbps, though a further help came from not using the inbuilt modem, but instead use the 2850 with an Openreach modem (in our ECIs on our lines here in the office).

The lack of support from Draytek from this after providing loads of evidence gave us the final push to no longer recommend them to clients after 10 years of flying the flag for them.

In reply to a post by aquiss:

The lack of support from Draytek from this after providing loads of evidence gave us the final push to no longer recommend them to clients after 10 years of flying the flag for them.

Out of curiosity which do you now recommend? I was thinking of going back to Draytek after using a Zyxel for some time.

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

In reply to a post by aquiss:

The lack of support from Draytek from this after providing loads of evidence gave us the final push to no longer recommend them to clients after 10 years of flying the flag for them.

Out of curiosity which do you now recommend? I was thinking of going back to Draytek after using a Zyxel for some time.

I was going to ask the same question. I need to be able to handle multiple public IP addresses, i.e. assign some to a NAT pool and some to various end devices.

Martin: thanks for your response by the way. It has helped get the speed up a fair bit. I had to tweak your instructions a little bit, for instance I had to disable QoS (after setting the speeds). It also seems like I have to have the default firewall entries turned on (I had turned everything off in the firewall section before) otherwise it goes slow again. Either way, it still isn't as fast as the TP-Link, but it is getting near (65ish, sometimes bursting to 70... TP-Link was stable at 75).

The software just seems flaky as hell to be honest (on the Draytek), which is a shame.

I'd happily spend a bit more on an alternative if it did everything I needed and did it well. If I was happy with just using 1 static IP I could pick so many...

I've been looking at SonicWALL and Cisco..

Edited by deleted (Fri 05-Jan-18 19:00:17)

For lots of features, have a look at Mikrotik routers. The learning curve is steep but the features they offer for the amount they cost is fantastic. Mikrotik don�t do modems that I am aware of, I just use Openreach Huawei�s with my mikrotik routers.

Loads of other routers will handle multiple IPs just fine too, it�s not really that advanced a feature to justify spending a lot on a very expensive router.

Take a look at Ubiquiti's EdgeRouter products as well perhaps?

Whilst I've generally found Ubiquity products to be excellent, I shied away from their routers and switches as they had a known problem with buffers filling and slowing networks down on some of their early tough switches so I avoided them. Not sure if they are still affected or not.

Not had any problems with my ER-Lite...

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

In reply to a post by aquiss:

The lack of support from Draytek from this after providing loads of evidence gave us the final push to no longer recommend them to clients after 10 years of flying the flag for them.

Out of curiosity which do you now recommend? I was thinking of going back to Draytek after using a Zyxel for some time.

Good Evening,

Of course it depends on needs, but can't believe i'm going to say this, but TP-Link (god I feel a headache coming on) is what we are getting the most reliable results from and they have quite an extensive range of products these days.

Martin: thanks for your response by the way. It has helped get the speed up a fair bit. I had to tweak your instructions a little bit, for instance I had to disable QoS (after setting the speeds). It also seems like I have to have the default firewall entries turned on (I had turned everything off in the firewall section before) otherwise it goes slow again. Either way, it still isn't as fast as the TP-Link, but it is getting near (65ish, sometimes bursting to 70... TP-Link was stable at 75).

The software just seems flaky as hell to be honest (on the Draytek), which is a shame.

You're welcome and I'm glad my guide has got you towards at least some reasonable speeds, but as you have found, too much farting about with Draytek.

However, yup, I don't think they have made a product as good as the 2600, since then it's been going downhill.

The final nail in the coffin as far as Draytek goes for me was the discovery that even if you set the LAN side to a /23 or /22, the DHCP server still only serves 255 addresses (well, 253) and it can't be increased.

For something that pretends to be better than a plain basic consumer device, that's utterly unconscionable.

Oh, and the web config login page presenting on the WAN side and permitting valid username/password enumeration even if "disabled".

In reply to a post by aquiss:

However, yup, I don't think they have made a product as good as the 2600, since then it's been going downhill.

Must admit I started with a 2600 which was very good and then went with a 2800 which was OK but not brilliant. After that I used Zyxel since their support was exrtremely good at the time, but that went downhill, probably not so much if you were a large enterprise customer.

Since then I've been looking at going back to Draytek, but I must admit your reference to T-P Link made me laugh. I will check their kit though as they do seem to be getting a decent rep.