ASUS ROG Rapture - GT-AC5300 - DUAL WAN

[ForkWNY]

Is anyone successfully using DUAL WAN on an ASUS ROG device (my particular device is the GT-AC5300)? I can't get load balancing working for whatever reason.

I'm trying to load balance Verizon FiOS and Spectrum, both coming through separate modems. No dice so far. I've rebooted the router a few times, power cycled the modems, you name it. I'm using ethernet LAN from port 2 as my secondary WAN connection, which is connected to my Spectrum Modem. FiOS modem is connected to the WAN port.

Both providers use the same DHCP/dynamic IP assignment, and my thinking was that this setup should be simple, but as you can see from the screenshots below, secondary WAN shows up as not connected. BOTH modems work fine when connected to the WAN port on the router. No issues. I know this is probably NOT a common setup, as most don't have two broadband providers coming in. For those who have this working, or have gone through troubleshooting similarly to what I'm going through, any input appreciated as always.

Here are screenshots of my config:

 

[ForkWNY]

Managed to get it working...had to power off every AiMesh node and every network device, including both modems, as well as the main router, for several minutes, before both WANs connected up properly. That included unplugging the network cables connecting the modems...I connected the FiOS cable to WAN, waited for that to come up, then connected the cable from my Spectrum modem to the Ethernet LAN 2 port. Both connected properly, finally.

Otherwise made no additional config changes. Enough to drive someone insane considering there was no reason it should not have been working in the first place.

 

[Tech9]

It perhaps still doesn’t work properly. Load balancing is very basic and fail back/over is extremely unreliable. I never had an Asus router in my hands with properly working Dual WAN.

 

[Tech9]

I have no time to test @Ranger802004 Dual WAN custom script for Asuswrt-Merlin, but it perhaps works much better than Asuswrt built-in implementation. If you really need reliable multi-WAN, a cheap ER605 router for $60 will do it for you. It switches failed connections in 30 seconds. I have 3 offices with dual ISP and was using recently Cisco RV345P routers, replaced by Netgate 6100 appliances. From home routers Synology is the closest to the real deal.

 

[LeoT]

I had dual wan load balancing setup on AX88U before. If it is about simple use case like browsing web page, it may work. But it did not work well especially for my company VPN. I finally gave up.

 

[ForkWNY]

I had dual wan load balancing setup on AX88U before. If it is about simple use case like browsing web page, it may work. But it did not work well especially for my company VPN. I finally gave up.

I agree...after using load balancing for a few hours, it seems to cause more problems and is subject to odd random network timeouts and other issues. The load balancing algorithms ASUS is using are lacking and don't seem to intelligently handle balancing traffic between two 1Gb connections. I definitely do NOT notice any improvements in throughput or speed. In fact, load balancing seems to do the opposite, causing a degradation in performance rather than an improvement. I would not recommend using DUAL WAN load balancing on a home or production network of any type based on what I've experienced over just a few hours.

The only way I see load balancing being useful is through using the routing rules which allows you to force a particular device's traffic over the primary or secondary WAN. That's assuming you're making use of static IP's on most, if not all, of your LAN devices...and good luck maintaining that going forward. If all of your network devices had static IP's, you could simply create routing rules for every single device on your network, splitting up the devices by IP and sending half out on the primary WAN, and the other half out on the secondary WAN. At least then you'd be making use of both WANs without suffering from the performance degradation of whatever ASUS is doing for "load balancing."

 

[LeoT]

I tired that before. It is not maintainable in long term. I had to re-setup in every firmware update. And it also defected the purpose of load balancing.

 

[Ranger802004]

I agree...after using load balancing for a few hours, it seems to cause more problems and is subject to odd random network timeouts and other issues. The load balancing algorithms ASUS is using are lacking and don't seem to intelligently handle balancing traffic between two 1Gb connections. I definitely do NOT notice any improvements in throughput or speed. In fact, load balancing seems to do the opposite, causing a degradation in performance rather than an improvement. I would not recommend using DUAL WAN load balancing on a home or production network of any type based on what I've experienced over just a few hours.

The only way I see load balancing being useful is through using the routing rules which allows you to force a particular device's traffic over the primary or secondary WAN. That's assuming you're making use of static IP's on most, if not all, of your LAN devices...and good luck maintaining that going forward. If all of your network devices had static IP's, you could simply create routing rules for every single device on your network, splitting up the devices by IP and sending half out on the primary WAN, and the other half out on the secondary WAN. At least then you'd be making use of both WANs without suffering from the performance degradation of whatever ASUS is doing for "load balancing."

View attachment 44105

That's because the stock firmware doesn't create all of the proper FWMark and Mask rules for Load Balance Mode to work properly, I resolved that problem in my Dual WAN Failover Script.

WANFailover - Dual WAN Failover Script

WAN Failover is designed to replace the factory ASUS WAN Failover functionality, this script will monitor the WAN Interfaces using a Target IP Address and pinging these targets to determine when a failure occurs. When a failure is detected in Failover Mode, the script will switch to the...

www.snbforums.com

 

[ForkWNY]

I have no time to test @Ranger802004 Dual WAN custom script for Asuswrt-Merlin, but it perhaps works much better than Asuswrt built-in implementation. If you really need reliable multi-WAN, a cheap ER605 router for $60 will do it for you. It switches failed connections in 30 seconds. I have 3 offices with dual ISP and was using recently Cisco RV345P routers, replaced by Netgate 6100 appliances. From home routers Synology is the closest to the real deal.

@Tech9 - do you know off-hand if TP-Link's ER605 router you mentioned in your reply will allow a configuration such that all outbound traffic goes through a particular WAN while inbound is equally load balanced? Reason I ask is Fios is 1Gb outbound, vs 40Mbps outbound for Spectrum...I'd want to make sure at the very least that all outbound traffic goes out over the higher-throughput connection. For $60 it seems that router would be a great solution, but I'm presuming the configuration is very limited.