DrayTek Vigor 2927ac Dual-WAN Gigabit Ethernet Load Balancing WiFi Router, Wireless AC 1300, Firewall, VPN, 5 Gigabit RJ-45 LAN Ports

I saw that I'm well within my return window. But this DrayTek router is NOT going back!My old DrayTek was doing well, but a recent outage by my broadband supplier that lasted from a Friday until Monday morning had me trying to bully my old DrayTek into taking my iPhone with a 5G connection on it. It didn't really workout that well. The old DrayTek, a Vigor2820, could take two WAN connections but one of them had to be an ADSL and the other an ethernet type connection.I wasn't able to do my work during this period of Internet outage and that justified my search for a backup broadband solution. AND a new router that would take two ethernet WAN connections and do an automatic failover so that if the primary broadband should fail, the backup broadband should work.My primary broadband comes in over the telephone line and is a fibre connection. So I wanted my secondary connection to turn up using a different method, but I didn't fancy paying the costs of a cable type connection. Remembering that I had a 'spare' 5G SIM, I decided to go for a 5G router as my backup broadband. That SIM would be relatively cheap to run in the background, and I can share extra data to it from another connection if any outage would be prolonged.So I went for the ZTE 5G CPE MC801A as my 5G router, and I'll get around to reviewing that later.This new DrayTek Vigor2927 takes on both WAN sources in a fantastic way! It was easy enough to set up, and I had initial hiccups in doing this and this was largely because in my process, I'd left the old Vigor router as still connected to the network. Those routers were having a punch up in the background but order was restored when I disconnected the old router.And now, whilst watching a video online, I'm able to test failover by manually disconnecting the primary broadband. The video kept on playing for about 30 secs. Then I got the buffering spinner thing for about 20 secs or so. And then the video continued to play! Brilliant :-)Come on the next primary broadband downtime! I'm likely not to notice it now.Another huge benefit to switching out the router is that the old router wasn't able to cope much with the faster fibre connections and so watching videos sometimes involved a bit of buffering. I imagined that the problem was at the other end. It wasn't. The new router sorted that out and buffering is more or less, a thing of the past :-)

I bought the DrayTek Vigor 2927AX as an upgrade as part of having an Openreach FTTP service installed, replacing a FTTC service.It replaced a Draytek 2860AC which I had for 7 years and was starting to be limiting.I wanted a greater throughput and the capability for 2 Ethernet presented WAN connections, I was also after the newer WiFi 6 (primarily for future proofing as I'm after the same life from a new router as the old one).The 2927AX more or less meets those objectives. I'm not in a position to check the real world throughput but it allows for an Openreach FTTP service and potentially (and at the loss of a LAN port) a second WAN connection.The WiFi with my (less than cutting edge) devices seems slightly better but only a modest improvement.Most other things are very similar to the 2860AC and by a bit of manual transfer I've moved the initial configuation from old to new (mercifully the IP reservation can be saved from the 2860AC and loaded on the 2927AX which saves too many things breaking).The device is fine, I'm sure I'll make use of the incremental extra facilities over the 2860AC in time but it is evolution rather than revolution.If you can wait, it might be worth seeing if 2024 brings an upgraded version (perhaps 2.5Gb/s or 10Gb/s WAN capability) which is more like the Vigor1000B but with WiFi. That's clearly where the next product needs to go (perhaps with SFP cages).The other thing you might wish to think about is whether you want some kind of mesh WiFi system and actually whether having one WiFi access point in the router is a good idea or whether a router without WiFi and a seperate mesh WiFi is a better answer.May 2024 updateAfter a WAN speed update I do wonder if the claimed throughput performance is "real". I can get around 700Mb/s on a nominally 1Gb/s connection. It won't be 1Gb/s anyway as gigabit Ethernet will achieve a bit more like 940Mb/s.The PC will only do about 700Mb/s but doing simultaneous speed tests on 2 PCs (each capable of 700Mb/s) you see the speed shared between the two.I don't have much config that should tax the router (just a few VLANs) and one PC is on an untagged port so I don't see that being the issue.So, from my experience the WAN throughput spec is a bit "ideal conditions". Perhaps related the hardware acceleration didn't seem to do anything (perhaps something in my config stops it working).It's a very decent router and I'm pleased with it but it would be nice if it had a bit more "grunt".July 2024 updateThe 2927AX is still going well but I really can't get hardware acceleration to work. The ISP service achieves 940Mb/s with their router but I really can't achieve this with the Draytek.The around 700Mb/s with no hardware acceleration is, in practice, fine but if you are looking for a speedtest that shows close to 1Gb/s this may not be the device for you.

I have been using Draytek router for years. Till now Draytek 2925 without wireless feeding two broadband connections as load balancing to a Tp link eap wired mesh system which worked flawlessly for last few years.Recently upgraded one broadband connection to virgin media 1gb fibre and 2925 could reach about 300mb which was still good enough but not using the full potential of 1gb connection.Upgraded to latest 2927 wired model. Changed settings from load balance to failover with virgin media as active line and slower second broadband connection as failover. Separated LAN ports of router to keep wired desktop and other stuff separate from WiFi devices (can easily do this in router settings) and connected to link eap to this new router. Had old ASU’s routers (in Amish setup)which got connected to another lan port on 2927.Now I have two separate mesh systems connected to 2927. Wired connections give full 1gb speed and wireless much much faster.Best part is the failover setup. If main internet connection drops there is no lag and 2927 switches over to standby line in less than a second. Which means if you are on a teams video call or watching Netflix there is no drop in connection.With lots of IoT devices and streaming on several devices you will not notice buffering or a connection drop off.A brilliant piece of kit. Highly recommended. Not too difficult to set up even for the first time users of Draytek routers.

It’s a DrayTek router - the first one died after a week, but the replacement hasn't missed a beat.