Draytek Vigor 166 G.fast Modem / Router Review
Looking around on the web I could find very little regarding the Vigor 166, other than how long it has gone from product announcement to actual product on the shelves. In the absence of any reviews here is my first impressions of it when operating in pure G.fast bridged / modem mode.
The shipping box is typical DrayTek fair and it was nice to see a proper code sticker on the box to show the firmware version and date as shipped. I did see pictures on the web of this product labelled as either Vigor 165 or Vigor 166, depending on version purchased. This one is labelled as ‘Vigor 160 Series’ and seems to cover both the 165 and 166 but with some caveats on the 165 feature set:
The box includes a drilling template should you wish to mount the unit to something; although judicious use of velcro usually suits me fine:
DrayTek is clearly embracing plastic as the packaging medium of choice, even managing to wrap plastic things in plastic with bonus plastic. To avoid landfill I will feed the plastic to the local grey seal colony but keep the telco cable, Cat5e and quick start guide in a suitable dust-gathering space:
For those familiar with the older Vigor 130 VDSL modem/router you can see that DrayTek didn’t expend anything on the new design - it is identical in form to the previous model. Nothing particularly wrong with the design though as it is relatively small, lightweight and can be easily mounted or fit on a 1U rack shelf. It will also fit with the existing aftermarket rack mount kits produced for the Vigor 130 [130 left - 160 right]:
One very welcome change for some users will be the doubling of LAN ports on the rear - now sporting 2 ports that are routed and capable of hosting their own subnets. Otherwise it is the standard RJ11/12 WAN port, reset button (can be software disabled) and a power/dying gasp switch for the 12vdc barrel socket:
The revised Vigor 160 Series labelling is carried on the top/front of the unit, together with 4 green LED indicators:
Powering-up the unit is a bit quicker than the Vigor 130 and you are treated to some reasonably vocal relay switching. Plugging in an ethernet cable results in the Vigor grabbing the 192.168.1.0 subnet, giving itself the 192.168.1.1. address and its DHCP server giving out a 192.168.1.10 address to the first connected client:
DrayTek have yet to employ randomised passwords and the default Username and Password are both set as ‘admin’ as standard. You do get a warning during the setup process to remind you that the default password should be changed:
Going to the 192.168.1.1. web page reveals a familiar DrayTek Dashboard. Unlike the Vigor 130 the time can be set via browser or ntp and the inbuilt browser is noticeable quicker to respond when compared to the 130. MAC addresses can be changed and this unit shipped with firmware V4.0.5_STD. At default the unit powers-up in router-mode so it has all the typical router features and controls exposed to the GUI:
First order of battle was to update the firmware to one dated earlier this month. The firmware comes in 2 flavours with ‘all’ suffix being the normal load that preserves any configuration and the ‘rst’ version resetting the unit to factory-fresh defaults during the firmware update. I didn’t time the update but it wasn’t quick:
It should be noted that the v4.1.0_STD contains 2 different modem codes that can be set via the GUI. The readme file contains no detail as to which should be used or why and the inclusion of 2 modem codes in one firmware load is not something I have seen before with DrayTek. More of that later:
There is a Quick Start Wizard to set the typical range of parameters. Most are set to ‘auto’ anyway with sensible settings to get most users going. You can of course define the DSL protocols used for quicker reboots and quicker handshakes. Most of these changes will prompt a reboot though, extending the setup time somewhat:
The option to set the router (ie default mode) to Modem/Bridge Mode can be found under the lefthand Operation Mode menu item. Again, this prompts another reboot:
Once up and running again in Modem mode the various router-only modes are removed from the menu tree, leaving just the basics required for modem / PPPoE modem use:
Under the LAN - General Setup menu you can set the subnet to match your town opology. The 2 LAN ports can be set independently and run their own DHCP server if required. For my use I just switched the subnet to 10.0.0.0/24 and as the WAN interface on my router is set as 10.0.0.1 I set the modem itself to 10.0.0.2:
To provide easy access to the modem GUI from the WAN side of the router you have 3 reasonable options. The second modem LAN port could be used as a hardwired and out-of-band management port, or a NAT masquerade rule could be set on a compliant router or, as the Vigor modem is still a router at its heart you can set a simple static route via the CLI. In my case this was a simple ip route add 10.0.1.0 255.255.255.0 10.0.0.1 static to link to my management subnet which resides on 10.0.1.0. A quick ip route status confirms the route has been set:
Under Internet Access - General Setup I chose to set the WAN VLAN tag and set the DSL mode to G.fast only. I understand that these should auto-populate to the Openreach settings if left alone, but I did not try that:
The final setting is under Internet - MPoA to set the MTU. Disappointingly and unusually for DrayTek the MTU has a hard cap of 1500, rather than their usual 1520 byte limit. This means no baby jumbo frames as defined by the Openreach SINs so the PPPoE overhead has to be carried inside the 1500 MTU limit. One hopes this will be changed by DrayTek in later firmware loads. I have not experimented with the CLI as yet to see if it exposes a greater MTU range:
Once the settings are complete and boredom with reboots has set-in installing a WAN cable will send the unit into DSL READY mode:
After a suitable amount of relay clicks and flashing lights the modem settles into TRAINING mode for a minute or 2:
Before achieving G.fast SHOWTIME state and it populates the various DSL statistics and connection details. I am on a capped package at 160/30 Mbps:
An abridged set of stats can be found under Online Status - Physical Connection. It is these statistics that are reported downstream to DrayTeks own routers as a parameter set, with the basic SNR, Actual Connection Speed and Tx/Rx packets:
The CLI also exposes the line stats but there was some oddities in this data and not all of it correlated with the GUI so there may be a mapping or lookup table issue somewhere:
So finally, the Dashboard when cruising the dead-end technology highway that is G.fast:
I say cruising but in truth there are a few things to iron out. I suspect that the modem code may be incorrect (more experiments to come) and between that and the MTU not playing well with the rest of my network settings did lead to some latency spikes. The raw speed was there but the hesitations need to be sorted. I’ll contact DrayTek with my observations and see when the next firmware drop is due as that is expected to resolve some of the issues with UK use. Till then I will experiment on the LAN side and have installed the Openreach Huawei Modem back on its shelf, hidden under a chest of drawers. Nobody needs to see a modem:
Hope this helps those who are researching the slim-pickings of G.fast capable modems & routers.
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Topic: Draytek Vigor 166 G.fast Modem / Router Review (Read 57805 times)