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This review first appeared in issue 360 of PC Pro.
DrayTek’s Vigor 2927Lax-5G is an ideal appliance for small businesses that can’t tolerate any internet downtime as it offers an incredible range of WAN redundancy features. Along with an integral 5G LTE modem sporting dual SIM slots for primary and backup mobile network connections, it can use two of its seven gigabit ports for WAN connections, the USB-A 2 port accepts a 4G modem and all can be linked together for load-balancing or failover purposes.
Redundancy features include the ability to deploy two routers in high availability mode. Sharing a virtual IP address, they can be set to hot-standby mode when sharing one internet connection or active-standby if each has its own link.
The router also delivers integrated Wi-Fi 6 services. Its AX3000-rated access point (AP) claims up to 574Mbits/sec on its 2.4GHz radio and 2,400Mbits/sec on the 5GHz one, plus it supports the Wi-Fi 6 high-performance 160MHz channels.
The Vigor 2927Lax-5G supports four SSIDs on each radio and can present a hotspot web portal for guest access with a range of authentication methods. It runs DrayTek’s Central AP Management service for automated provision of up to 20 DrayTek wireless APs and can even act as a root node in a meshed wireless network.
You’re in luck if you want plenty of VPN services as the price includes support for 50 IPsec tunnels plus 25 SSL VPNs. The router can increase IPsec VPN performance by applying hardware acceleration.
Deployment is a breeze. The web console provides quick start wizards for configuring internet access using your choice of interfaces, creating VPNs and presenting secure wireless services. The firewall has a predefined security policy applied, which can be customized with rules and filters, and you can use them to enforce app controls and web content filtering.
It didn’t take long to set up a mobile connection. We popped an EE 5G SIM in the top slot and enabled the 5G NR option in the web console’s list of internet access connections. After a brief initialization, it came online and we could view its properties from the 5G LTE status page.
Internet redundancy is configured by defining multiple WAN connections as active or backup links, where the latter is automatically brought online when the primary link fails or its traffic exceeds specific thresholds. Another option is to set all links as active and use load balancing to distribute traffic across them.
The router can also send and receive SMS messages. Alerts and status reports can be sent to specified mobile numbers, and password- or PIN-protected SMS messages used to remotely reboot it.
The hardware accelerator takes wired, wireless and 5G traffic passed to it from the firewall and content filters and bypasses the router’s CPU. It makes a huge difference to wireless performance: disabling it saw file copies between a gigabit-connected server and a Wi-Fi 7 Windows workstation average only 45MB/sec, which leapt to 112MB/sec with it enabled.
Businesses will find DrayTek’s optional Cyren web content filter preferable to the free and somewhat basic German-hosted BPjM service. It offers 83 web categories that can be blocked or allowed using up to eight profiles. A 30-day trial can be activated from the web console, with a full subscription costing just £20 a year.
SMBs and remote offices that demand always-on internet access will love the Vigor 2927Lac-5G. It doesn’t provide anti-malware services, but this affordable security router offers an unbeatable set of WAN redundancy features and adds extra value with its integral Wi-Fi 6 services.
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