I had a perfectly working network at home. Just a simple router from my provider (Odido), a few port forwards, and everything ran smoothly.
Then I rented a small office space to work from. Seemed logical to set up a site-to-site LAN connection — so I could access files from home while at the office, and vice versa.
So I bought two Draytek routers.
- Draytek Vigor 2135ax (With WIFI)
- Draytek Vigor 2135 (Without WIFI)
Total cost: 450,- euro’s.
Not cheap — but I figured I was paying for reliability and solid performance.
Here’s how the router is advertised:
“The Draytek 2135 is primarily targeted towards small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and home offices, offering features suitable for their networking needs. It is known for its reliability and is often a popular choice in the UK for these types of setups.“
Sounds right, doesn’t it?
Well… it couldn’t be much further from the truth.
Site to Site VPN
Hey DrayTek! 1999 called — they want their HTML interface back.
On top of that, getting the Site to Site link up and running is overly complex and, to me, totally counter-intuitive.
And then — if it actually worked — I wouldn’t even care. But hey, why would it be stable? Every two to three weeks the site-to-site link just died. Only fix? A physical reboot of one of the routers.
Great!
Teams
And this will sound weird — because it is weird. I have absolutely no explanation for this one.
At the office, I have a 50 Mbps connection. Not blazing fast, but perfectly fine for work: sharing files, running Teams, you name it.
But hey — when you’re using a DrayTek router, why would it work properly in the first place?
Teams itself worked… mostly.
Messaging? Fine.
Calls? No problem.
Meetings? Smooth.
But the moment someone shared their screen, everything fell apart. I’d see nothing but a black square. I could share my screen just fine — but viewing someone else’s?
Nope.
And here’s the weirdest part: If I switched my laptop to a mobile hotspot, suddenly it worked flawlessly.
Then I’d switch back to my wired DrayTek connection… and bam, the shared screen would magically freeze again in an instant.
Freezing connections
Yes — plural.
At the office, both wired and wireless connections would freeze for up to 30 seconds, multiple times a day.
Annoying, but at least it came back.
At home, it got worse. Remember those port forwards I mentioned? They come into play here.
I had only a few:
- One for HTTP
- One for OpenVPN — using a random external port, not 1194
- And one for… let’s say, downloading Linux ISOs via a torrent client.
And mind you: I had the exact same setup on my ISP-provided router before switching to DrayTek.
Same port forwards, same services, same internal network.
Not a single issue.
Stable as a rock.
Now enter the DrayTek 2135 into the equation.
With only a little bit of traffic, the router choked. Ping times shot up to over 2 seconds, then the device became completely unresponsive.
Tried reaching the web interface?
Yeah… no.
It would take several minutes to recover and start routing again — as if it needed to calm down from a proverbial panic attack.
I tried everything.
- Reduced torrent connections to nearly nothing.
- Set hard limits on speed and peers.
- Even dropped from the usual 200 connections to just 10.
Still, the DrayTek choked.
Wheezed.
Froze.
Collapsed.
So I contacted Draytek support.
Gave a Draytek technician remote access. He couldn’t find the problem either.
But he did have a solution:
“Just disable your port forwards.”
Yes. That was his actual answer. Can you believe it!?
Pinpoint
In order to pinpoint the problem, I reinstated the router provided by my ISP.
And what do you know…
It handled all the port forwards just fine.
It routed all the torrent traffic — without a hiccup, without a freeze, and without a panic attack.
Checklist
Here’s what I tried to fix the issues — both at the office and at home:
- Firmware updates
- Reverted to factory settings
- Tested without the Site to Site VPN connection
- Syslog enabled on both routers forwarded to my Kibana / Elastic stack
Nothing worked, not a single clue what was happening on both routers.
Both routers remained silent — and broken.
OPNSense
Totally fed up with the situation — and with some very disgruntled family members breathing down my neck — I decided to test something else.
I found an unused Intel NUC with an ancient i5 processor buried in a storage drawer.
Also dug up a USB-to-LAN adapter.
Downloaded OPNSense, installed it on the NUC, and did a basic setup: fixed IP, gateway — nothing fancy.
As a final step, I replaced the DrayTek router at the office.
And guess what?
- No more connection drops.
- No more Teams issues.
- No more freezing.
The entire internet connection suddenly became stable as a rock.
Exactly how it should have been all along.
Later that week, I bought a rugged but simple 4-core Celeron box with 4 Ethernet ports. Installed OPNSense on it as well, did the base configuration, added my port forwards, and set up the site-to-site LAN connection.
And lo and behold — everything just worked.
Stable as a rock.
All port forwards happy.
No hiccups.
No panic attacks.
Just… stability.
Exactly what I paid over €400 for — and didn’t get from DrayTek!
Draytek
Hey DrayTek — and the webshop I bought the stuff from:
Thanks for nothing.
Seriously again. Thank you for nothing.
- For the lack of support. ( Disabling port forwards is NOT a solution )
- For the endless instability issues.
- For selling me two routers that couldn’t even do their most basic job: TO ROUTE.
- And for the empty promises:
I’m still waiting for your call.
Or email.
Or anything, really.
You sold me two worthless bricks of hardware — both completely incapable of doing the one thing they were built for. They are now just paper weights!
And it’s not like I ordered some random junk off AliExpress.
I bought DrayTek for a reason. For the brand.
For the so-called “stable” aura around it.
But boy, was I wrong.
Now I’ve got two routers sitting in my cupboard collecting dust.
I can’t use them.
And I sure as hell won’t sell them — Because why would I pass these problems on to another innocent victim,
still clinging to the myth that DrayTek stands for “reliable”?
Rant done.
If anyone wants to buy two unstable routers and grow some gray hairs in the process — you know where to find me.
Brain – out!
#draytek #fail