SOHO/Small Business router

visibleman

visibleman

visibleman

Soldato
Joined
3 Jun 2005
Posts
3,332
Location
The South
Hi All,

On the hunt for a new router for a small office - currently there are 5 users (unlikely to get much bigger), currently on a 4Mbit connection (likely to get bumped at some point, max we can get in the building is 20Mbit), need VPN (PPTP if possible) on the router for remote access (ie: when the MD is on holiday :p), ideally wireless (not a huge issue as a WAP could be fitted) and i'm looking in the £100-200 range.
Oh and something that won't need to be watched, rather once setup it'll happily chug on 24/7.

I've been hunting around, looking on forums and reading reviews and so far i've got these on my list -
  • Draytek 2830n
  • Draytek 2920n
  • TP-Link TL-ER6120
  • Cisco RV180w
  • TP-LINK TL-ER6020
  • Cisco RV220w

They all seem to get reasonable reviews from Small Net Builder (no review for the 6120) although reviews else where all seem to be a bit hit/miss.

The Cisco's appear to be the best performers (the TP 6020 appears to have the best VPN/PPTP performance) and offer decent support but apparently they have a terribly slow and 'clunky' admin interface (doubt that's much of any issue once setup).

The TP-Link's are meant to be reasonable devices - decent performance (reading on a few forums, the 6120 seems to get a bit of praise but yet to find a proper review), ok features etc

The Draytek's look like they come with all the bells 'n' whistles, get reasonable reviews and generally appear to be decent performers but apparently they're a bit of a mare to setup (i've briefly touched Draytek's in the past and i didn't find it too bad although this was a fair few years ago) and support/documentation is meant to be next to nothing.


So the questions are - has anyone had experience, good or bad, with any of the above? Can anyone recommend any of them?
Alternatively, are there any other recommendations that would fit the bill and i should look at?

Cheers all :)

Edit - Forgot to mention, the net connection gets hammered daily for emails and web access as the business is predominantly web-based.
 
I use a Draytek 2920 at home, and have 2820 and 2830 models at customer sites.

They are a bit odd to configure, but not difficult.

I've never had to reboot one to clear a fault, and the IPsec site-to-site VPNs I have running just keep on working month after month.

I've never used one of the wireless versions. A comms rack is a terrible place to put an access point, so I always use separate dedicated access points.
 
The 2830 Series are exceptional, in terms reliability, we have installed more than 100 in two years, with not a single unit failing.

I would avoid TP-Link for Commercial setups, they are not robust enough.

Check out the comparison here, and look at the 2850n (which will support ADSL and VDSL) which could be a better "future proofing" (hate that phrase) investment for the company:

http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/comparison.html

Recommendation: DrayTek 2850n.
 
Cheers all, seems i should look at Draytek then. Only issue i've read is that the wireless on Draytek's is a little pants compared to other devices but i can't see that being an issue considering the office is fairly small.


Caged - Had very little experience of Cisco gear apart from low-end stuff; what's the setup like on the 867? I'm assuming it's mostly CLI based?
 
Bit of an out there suggestion... billion 7800n, it is a soho router after all, just cheaper than the others :)

I was in a similar boat for my home router, I work from home, need a stable router due to voip business line and heavy load on the router etc. Initially I considered the draytek 2850vn but I kept seeing all the reviews for the billion 7800n which seemed to fulfil all the needs I had of the router so in the end saved 120 quid and went that way instead... seems to have been a good choice :)

it does the vpn - linky

got an easy ui in my opinion - take a look at the online version here

it supports adsl2+ and mine is happy at 8meg down, 1meg up on adsl 2 (still on the adsl 1 profile) with constant 800+/100+ kB/s download/uploads. I've had it maxed out at speed for hours on end too with no issues. Also has option of load balancing etc if you want it via a wan port.
 
Did have a look at the Billion, granted it's pretty well priced and spec'd, but i read a handful of poor reviews that put me off slightly unfortunately.

Ended up going for a 2920n in the end, which is probably a little overkill (for the time being anyway) but it's simply brilliant and setup was relatively straight forward - had an issue with it not saving the static IP details but restoring it to factory settings and using the wizard for the initial setup seemed to do the trick.

Cheers all for the help any info though :)
 
bertles86 said:
The Wi-Fi on DrayTek's is actually pretty decent, you can always replace the three antennae with the ANT-1105 for a higher gain.
Click to expand...

Wireless performance and range always seems to crop up in Draytek reviews and they do appear to get a bashing for it but i can't say i've noticed any issues. Although the office is relatively small so coverage from the 2920n is perfectly fine.


pyropetepete - Seen the Mikrotik router boards before; pretty impressive but not sure i'd want something like that onsite, perhaps better suited to home usage/projects.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom