The DrayTek units come with some very spiffy software and utilities. None of them are necessary, but some of them make otherwise irritating or daunting tasks effortlessly convenient. The syslog utility is excellent, as it logs the syslog output of the Vigor routers and presents the information to the user in a customised Vigor-specific interface. From the syslog, users can determine firewall blocking, VPN activity, network activity, WAN data, and vital statistics about the router’s configuration and status (such as ADSL connection speeds, WAN IP, and so on). I’m very impressed with the DrayTek syslog utility. However, if you don’t use either the syslog utility or another external syslog, then you’re only able to get logs out of the Vigor devices via the CLI. Using the CLI of any of the routers is more than a little inconvenient.

I’m likewise impressed with the Smart VPN Dial-Up Connection Management utility. This handy tool automates the process of creating a VPN client login on Windows, and sets up all the appropriate VPN configuration settings for you. This is especially handy for folks who don’t really know what all the VPN stuff means. However, the VPN tool is of no use for setting up LAN-to-LAN VPNs, and you will have to know something about VPNs if you wish to try out this feature of any of the 3 routers.

A step in the right direction, in my opinion, is the use by DrayTek of a dedicated firmware upgrade utility. Although firmware upgrades can be carried out with the Vigors by TFTP client, the utility automates this otherwise command line process. I am a fan of dedicated firmware upgrade utilities like this one, as they first set the router to “ignore everything but the firmware upgrade” mode, which greatly enhances the stability of the delicate firmware upgrade process (upgrading firmware by web interface can be risky, as it is prone to interference by things such as download managers and content filters).

I initially couldn’t get the QuickStart Wizard for the Vigors to run, as it would crash trying to log into the router. I later discovered that this was due to my complicated password, which must have contained some characters that caused the utility to barf (but which did not cause the web login to break a sweat). The QuickStart Wizard for the DrayTek routers is a handy way to configure basic internet access and LAN options without having to use your web browser, and the utility automatically detects the presence of the Vigor router on your network.

For those who run Macintosh’s, there are MacOS 9 and MacOS X versions of the Syslog utility, Firmware Upgrade utility, and QuickStart Wizard. You’re on your own for VPN stuff, though. Likewise, if you run Linux, FreeBSD, SCO Unix, Solaris, etc, then you’re completely on your own. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, as it’s still possible to do everything, but you might have to put in a bit more work.

In comparison, with the 743GE itself, Billion only provides a small Windows utility to locate the 743GE router on your network. This utility will track down the IP address of your 743GE, which will then allow you to make use of the web based Quick Start functions. It only functions via a wired connection, although the instructional note that goes with it makes no mention of the fact that it will not work over wireless. However, a number of the functions that the Vigor utilities’ perform (namely syslog monitoring, and firmware upgrading) are incorporated into the web interface of the 743GE. This has the added side benefit of making these functions of the 743GE operating system independent.

Billion have recently released a Windows SNMP Viewer and SysLog Utility, which is available for download from their website. This piece of software is similar to the DrayTek syslog utility. However, while the DrayTek syslog utility focusses on syslog functions and has some SNMP data about the router included, the Billion one focusses on SNMP data, and has a syslog function included. In order to activate the syslogging features of the 743GE, you'll need to poke around the CLI a fair bit (unlike the Vigors, which have a simple web interface to enable or disable syslogging). Complete step-by-step instructions are provided with the Billion utility for enabling syslogging, however. A nice feature about the Billion utility is that it shows totals of data in and out for the various interfaces, and even graphs the DownStream and UpStream internet traffic for you. Overall the DrayTek program has superior syslog capabilities (separate tabs for the various logs, for instance), but the Billion software has superior SNMP capabilities for tasks like data monitoring. If you don't wish to use the Billion syslog utility, then it is still possible to conveniently and easily access syslog data using the web interface.

In addition, for the 743GE, there is a freely available Windows 741GE utlity made by Trev, located at http://shadow.sentry.org/~trev/741ge.html. This utility is very similar to the Billion one, and handily extracts information from the 743GE router using SNMP functions, records syslog output, and displays useful information about such things as incoming and outgoing data and network connections. One of the coolest features of this utility is quota tracking, in which the utility keeps track of your use of your ISPs download/upload quota for you.