“I had been using Draytek 2800s to connect remote offices to the central office, via VPN to Windows 2003 servers. The Draytek is quite slow at connecting the VPN you can see it trying lots of times before finally connecting, plus I don't think its PPTP VPN handling is all that reliable anyway - often the router would say the VPN was there but it wasn't and a reboot was needed.

So I tried the Billion 7402R2 and it works really well. It connected up the VPN before I could get to the status screen to see if all is OK. So far the VPN has been 100% reliable with these.

I also like the ability to setup a VPN dial in to the router to help connect up to the remote networks if I need to Remote Desktop etc.

If you enable the Firewall then note you need to configure ports OUT as well as IN!!! At first I thought this was a little trouble but now I am used to it I think it is better this way for a business connection, e.g want to Remote Desktop out? Setup the firewall Packet Filter to Allow 3389 OUT or it will not work! The device does setup some ports (like SMTP, POP3, HTTP, etc for you though).

Also if you want remote access you need to set the port (well I changed it from port 80) and then allow that through the firewall. If you setup the VPN then you will need to allow 1723 and GRE through the firewall (for PPTP) etc. it really isn't that hard if you have a little networking and TCPIP knowledge.

I like them a lot and am swapping out the Drayteks for these.”