I was asked to set-up some guest wireless access on a low budget and after looking and pricing up various solutions I decided that the Draytek 2830 fit the bill, in fact I’d been hearing nothing but good things about the 2820 and 2830 range for a little while now so was keen to have a play.

Draytek Firmware Upgrade

Jan 13, 2015 For most models, there are two files with the same file name but different extension: 'all' and 'rst'. They are almost the same, only that upgrade with the RST file will reset the router to factory default while the ALL file will keep the current configuration. For firmware operations, most DrayTek Vigor 2xxx routers should be supported (and some 3xxx also). The master password generator seems to work for all the models that have been tested for firmware operations. DrayTek heeft nieuwe firmware beschikbaar gesteld voor de Vigor 2920-serie routers. Deze routers zijn geschikt voor het doorgeven van adsl2-, adsl2+-, kabel- en voip-verbindingen.

Out of the box things were fairly straight forward, I managed to get a basic config down and everything was going well… that was until I power cycled the router. The ACT, USB, CSM and DSL would light up for 20 seconds or so, then they’d all flash off for a second or two and this cycle would repeat itself. Neither the WLAN or LAN came up, so I dug into the sparse troubleshooting section of the manual.

If you turn the router on whilst pressing in the factory reset button it should reset to the default config whilst the ACT, USB and CSM lights flash, unfortunately this wasn’t the case for me. The LAN port came up and I could ping the router, but wasn’t able to access the webgui/ssh and after 30 seconds or so the router would reboot and get stuck in the same cycle.

Whilst in this ‘mode’ (flashing reset lights), you can also tftp a new firmware to the device which thankfully resolved the issue.

How to resolve the reboot cycle

Download the Firmware Upgrade Utility and latest firmware from here, there will be two versions. The .ALL is the firmware only and should maintain the config, and .RST includes the firmware and a clean config.

Hold the Factory Reset button in whilst turning the router on, the ACT, USB and CMS lights will flash.

Load up the Firmware Upgrade Utility, enter 192.168.1.1 as the router IP, and select either the .RST or .ALL file. I tried the .RST at first and it seemed to complete the process, but didn’t resolve the issue so ended up using the .ALL. If the attempt times out, make sure you have no other active connections on the machine and/or bump up the time out accordingly (I ended up bumping it to 10 seconds). I did not have to enter a password.

Draytek Firmware All Or Rst Load

After the firmware has transferred across and the router has restarted you should be able to access from http://192.168.1.1 with the standard username and password of admin/admin.

You can export the configuration file by going to System maintenance -> Configuration Backup -> Backup- so if you’re reading this and have a 2820/2830 I’d recommend going ahead and taking a backup.

Draytek Firmware All Or Rst Load

I’ll finish the configuration off tomorrow and write up anything else I find, bar this initial hiccup I’ve been pretty impressed.