The Vigor 2136ax was launched in the UK&I at the end of January 2025. Lukasz Waligorski, Product Specialist at DrayTek, explains why this DrayTek SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) router is the fastest so far in the DrayTek portfolio.
DrayTek routers are known for their reliability, advanced security features, and scalability, making them ideal for both home and business networks. DrayTek ensures stable, high-performance connections for users seeking durable, future-proof networking solutions.
Why Speed Matters?
The days when the internet connection speed was always the bottleneck in the network are behind us. Today, most premises are or will soon be connected to fibre-optic networks, offering significantly faster speeds than legacy copper-based connections. However, network bottlenecks can still exist, and the router, network interfaces, switches and Wi-Fi could be the limiting factor. A slow or outdated router can prevent users from fully utilising the high-speed internet, causing issues like buffering, lag, or poor download speeds. To make the most of fibre connections, having a router that supports fast wireless standards and offers reliable coverage is essential for seamless streaming, gaming, and browsing.
Let’s Start with Multi Gigabits
The Vigor 2136ax is a superb example of DrayTek’s future-proof approach. The router comes with 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces that can connect to the Internet and LAN. The ‘ax’ suffix simply denotes the router is wireless, enabled for Wi-Fi 6, for use in a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network). This AX3000 model offers theoretical Wi-Fi speed of up to 3 Gbps for dual-band simultaneous connection of end devices. The newer 2136 offers a similar number of interfaces to the previous Vigor 2135ax, but it is much faster with over 2Gb firewall throughput.
The Beauty of Wi-Fi 6
Wi-Fi 6 is considered excellent because it offers significantly faster speeds, improved efficiency in handling multiple devices simultaneously, lower latency, enhanced security features, and better performance in crowded network environments compared to older Wi-Fi standards like Wi-Fi 5, making it ideal for businesses with many connected devices and busy households with demanding activities like streaming high-definition video or online gaming.
Two and 1/2 times Faster
The Vigor 2136ax is a 2.5G Router with AX3000 capacity. The dual-band Wi-Fi router provides 160MHz bandwidth and 1024-QAM to greatly increase the speed of a wireless connection. The theoretical speed is up to 3000Mbps, of which 574Mbps is in the 2.4GHz band and 2402Mbps in the 5GHz band. Which is 2.5 times faster than an 802.11ac 2×2 dual-band router.
The speed, at over twice that of an average dual-band router, makes the Vigor 2136ax perfect for professional smart homes and SOHO, small office/home office, users who would like to take full control of their own network. With hybrid working conditions becoming the “new normal” and the demands of AI-enabled devices, speedy routers will become essential in any networking configuration, especially for tasks such as large file transfers.
To OFDM or to OFDMA?
OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) is a key characteristic of the Wi-Fi 6 certification program. Included in the Wi-Fi 6 standard, OFDMA relies on efficient scheduling techniques to function effectively in congested and complex network environments. DrayTek’s new Vigor router is built for OFDMA.
Feel free to Roam
Wi-Fi roaming just got easier. Most people, at one time or another, will have experienced weak signals or signal lags or drags. It happens when we move from one area to another, in the industry we love to use the word roaming. We usually have more than one access point (AP or router) in our network systems, and we often find issues with the signals when we “roam” further away from one AP to another. With Vigor’s assisted signal, a stronger signal is guaranteed, with “Minimum RSSI with Adjacent AP” option, the Vigor router can disassociate to another AP such as the VigorAP 805 with a stronger wireless signal, and keep users connected when there’s no other AP nearby.
Saving Energy
The new Vigor routers are reaching optimum TWT (target wake time) too. TWT is a process that ensures that end devices spend more time in standby while sending and receiving data more economically. This reduces energy consumption and increases overall efficiency, allowing an AP to manage activity in the Wi-Fi network, reducing the required amount of time that a station in the power-save mode needs to be awake.
The Vigor 2136ax is equipped with business-grade features, including web content filtering, Route Policy, URL reputation, App-based QoS, and more.