Now attention turns to its predecessor, the Draytek 2762. For many the 2762 may still be in use as a dependable unit and offers more or less the same feature set of the newer units. But, does it have enough grunt to support the higher speed profiles that full fibre internet offers, and will its hardware acceleration help boost its potential?

For the test I’m using a 2762ac running the latest 3.9.7_BT firmware. As before, the throughput is measured with iPerf3 on a Windows machine with two NICs, MTU on WAN2 is set at a constant 1492.

Out of Box

Starting with a factory configuration, WAN2 was enabled and set to use a dynamic IP.

Quoted throughput is 400Mbps, however in this test I could only achieve 361Mbps:

Hardware Acceleration

While hardware acceleration is available for this generation of router, Draytek seemed to shy away from announcing or advertising. This seems odd as the single line in the spec sheet states that throughput of 900Mbps could be achieved with it on, albeit with some caveats such as a loss of traffic graphs and the monitor page.

Still running an out of box config, HW ACC was enabled to auto. Subsequent tests yielded around 923Mbps:

Granted, this test using iPerf3 is very simple creating a single session on an otherwise idle router, real world applications may have an impact on its performance.

Next, I thought to apply a basic setup on the router to see if this has an impact, consisting of remote access with 3 ACL entries and SNMP v2 enabled.

Following a reboot, on the next test speeds were back down to a pre-accelerated ballpark of 340Mbps:

Thinking that HW ACC was set to auto was the issue, I manually assigned the LAN side client to be in the scope of acceleration, yet speeds remained in the low 300Mbps.

For a sanity check, acceleration was set back to auto and the basic config setup reversed, returning it to a config where 900Mbps was achieved. Yet speeds did not improve.

At a complete loss, it was factory booted and again setup with the bare minimum of WAN2 and auto acceleration enabled. Speeds returned to 900Mbps. Yet, again the addition of ACL and SNMP brought speeds back down to non-accelerated levels.

Below is before and after the basic config:

Note: Summary speeds are at a lower 840Mbps as a click of the “OK” or “Submit” button on the web GUI causes the router to drop packets until config is saved.

Summary

If you’re looking to get more out of a Draytek 2762, I’d only expect it to reliably achieve a throughput of 330Mbps over WAN2.

While hardware acceleration is an option and can at times offer 950Mbps under sterile conditions, its implementation puts you in a precarious position where the next config change could more than halve the throughput. With only a factory reboot being the only resolution.

Draytek’ s current portfolio offers 950Mps NAT throughput on Ethernet WAN ports, let’s see if that is theoretical or expected.

The test will use a 2763ac running firmware 4.4.3_BT

Hardware Acceleration

The key point on Draytek’s spec sheet for WAN2 throughput is the 950Mbps can be achieved with hardware acceleration enabled.

Hardware acceleration has been an option on Draytek for many years, however historically enabling this came with caveats ranging from the loss of data flow statistics to a reduction in firewall effectiveness.

Out of the box with FW 4.4.3 hardware acceleration is enabled, either Draytek is confident it has matured enough to be able to fit around most users’ requirements, or it needs to be enabled in order to keep the product as a viable product.

Test – HW Acceleration On

Using just enough configuration to get it “online”, WAN2 was enabled for dynamic IP mode.

Test performed on a single machine using iperf3, one NIC port plugged into WAN2 via a switch, other port into LAN1.

Average throughput on 60 second test: 929Mbps

Test – HW Acceleration Off

For those still dubious about HW acceleration on these devices, it was disabled and test re-run.

Average throughput on 60 second test: 541Mbps

QOS

For final test I thought to load it with a standard setup with HW on, not complex but included SNMP, TR-069, ACL lists on management interfaces, I also chucked in 4 VLANs and a few firewall rules.

Two observations here:

In my usual setup I add software-based QOS, this took average test speeds down to 423Mbps.

Second note and may be a quirk, when adding the VLANs and sending router for reboot, the router entered a reboot loop, resolved only by physically cycling power, meaning I lost the error codes for any potential diagnostics.

Switching to HW QOS, test speeds remained excellent at 946Mbps average.

Summary

If you have no concerns around hardware acceleration, the 2763/2765 does what it says on the tin with a typical config. Your mileage will vary especially dependant on the number of NAT sessions it has to deal with in the real world but these tests are certainly promising.

Difference between 2763 and 2765

These units are essentially the same, but as the 2763 is exclusive to the UK you’ll likely find greater stock availability for these over the 2765.

The only difference relates to a chipset for the VDSL on WAN1, the chipset in the 2763 conforms to UK standard VDSL2 but falls out of spec for some European countries where VDSL2 35b code is used. This stemmed from the chip shortage of a few years ago and the alternative chipset was used to boost availability.

Source: https://www.draytek.co.uk/our-solutions/videos/draytek-webinars/vigor-2763-series-new-product-information