DrayTek Vigor AP 710 Entry-Level Managed 802.11n Business-class Wireless Access Point with ethernet port for AP mode or for wireless bridging

I love the Draytek brand. I've got various Vigor units and they all do exactly what they say with a huge number of features. The only criticism I have is their help documentation. It has the feeling of a document badly translated from another language. The unit has loads of features but it doesn't actually say what they do or what you might want to use them for. I'm guessing I would be using some of them if I knew what they were. So I think you can say its a great bit of kit. To set it up for most situations is easy. It can do loads of extra functions but you have to know what you want.

The AP works as a simple AP with no extras, with only one SSID and so far it works as you would expect. After my good experience with the Vigor 2820vn I'm sure this AP will do a similarly great service.

Solid, but slow - Draytek build quality and general expertise are never in doubt, but this thing is slow. It's a relatively old product, so I guess I shouldn't expect too much, but the speeds are getting to 20mbits (max) - weirdly the upstream is always faster. I'd blame it on this unit not having 5ghz options, but I have a 2.4g router and the speeds from that wifi blow this unit away (upwards of 90 mbits).

Ideal for the job in hand would recommend to others

Great

I'm currently working with Draytek to resolve the issues listed below and will update the review in due course. I refer to a device with 1.1.6 firmware.The key problem is this: In universal repeater mode the AP does not support broadcast traffic. This means if you have a DLNA server, use windows network discovery, or have printers which advertise their presence (Samsung direct print in my case) it simply doesn't work.Apart from that it's stable and reliable. It's just if you live in the 21st century this is pretty useless.Okay, an update to cover the 1.1.6.1 firmware update adding NETBIOS support - broadcast services still not supported, so still not fit for purpose.Another update to firmware release 1.2.0.0. and Samsung direct print is finally supported but Twonky is not.

I recently bought another of these access points, which is a slightly more up to date version of others I have in use. The unit looks more modern, but is otherwise the same as others that are basic but have served us well over several years. However, although the unit itself has obviously been updated, the instructions provided for set-up reminded me of the difficulties I had setting the others up. I did not find the set-up intuitive and would have appreciated it if the 'Quick Guide' could be more of an 'Idiots Guide' to help those of us less technically minded.