Dual WAN load balance (and 3G/4g)

[fozters]

Hi,

It seems that there is not much people using dual wan load balance mode on routers? Atleast there is not much threads and talk about it.

I have used dual wan load balance with phone line DSL + 3G (with Huawei e3276) couple of days now with Merlin .40 fw and rt-66ac router. It seems pretty stable with primary 3:1 secondary configuration. Newer firmware has broken usb modem network scripts (Asus) so that's why I'm using .40 version.

I am really interested about this dual wan load balance because I sadly have phone line dsl available only about 7Mbit/s speed as only possible "fixed" internet connection to my apartment, so I would really prefer faster download speeds.

3G is new to me and I chose 3G over 4G because only 3G in my country is available with public ipv4 address.

There is some issues still in dual wan load balance, for example port forwarding/virtual server, VPN and so on remote functions do not work in dual wan load balance mode.

If there would be a possible way to for example "nail" remote services to primary WAN it would be great. But I really don't know what is the real issue behind this and is this easy way to make it work.

Also I have recognized that the usb modem puplic IP is pingable from WAN but the WAN port wan ip is not when the "wan ip pingable" option is not checked.

There was not many threads about Dual Wan Load Balance with or without usb modem and I know these are somewhat new options and most people do not prefer Load Balance, but instead Failover. But there are propably more people interested about this Load Balance and I'd like to gather to this thread peoples experiments and problems and ofcourse possible resolutions to the problems

 

[fozters]

Also I have recognized that the usb modem puplic IP is pingable from WAN but the WAN port wan ip is not when the "wan ip pingable" option is not checked.

My bad the public ip is only pingable from internal network and not from outside wan..

What I have managed to find from internet in couple of days, it seems that there is no other option than the asus & merlin fw's to get dual wan load balance / round robining to work with usb dongle and wan port.

Waiting impatiently new firmwares with more options and fixed network scripts for (atleast huawei) usb dongles

 

[Speedy1205]

I`m in the same situation, but for now we need to wait. But for the Stick you are using E3276 you will have a lot of fun with the public IP (when its a hilink stick). The stick itself has already some routing NAT and I didnt get it to work at all with the public IP I get. After I changed the USB Modem, it worked fine (using now a Huawei E3276s-150 which works now for me. At least with the bit older firmwares.

Need to wait till we get a version which works also for the Huawei Modem users

 

[ogo]

I bought the RT-AC68U first for the fail over/failback function and second for the excellent wireless performance.

I updated to the latest firmware 5656, configure for fail over/failback with primary WAN and secondary USB 3G modem.

I have a primary WAN a cable link 60Mbps/4Mbps and secondary WAN a 3G USB modem.

In first test I unplugged the primary ethernet cable and the secondary take over successfully dropping few package (what I was able to see with ping -t command, 2 to 10 lines of "request timed out"). When I plugged back the ethernet cable, the primary takeover in maximum one minute again with few lines of "request timed out", the modem is disconnected and connected back, ready for the next swap (at least this is shown on the Network Map tab from the router menu). I repeated the test few times and everything looks fine.

In second test I unplugged the TV cable from the cable modem, keeping the ethernet cable connected and the cable modem powered. No reaction from the router, primary is shown connected, secondary connected but no internet traffic. I tried to enable the watch dog, switch to load balance, same behavior no reaction from the router to move on the secondary WAN, when TV cable is disconnected. In this case the router behavior is like any ordinary router without fail over/ load balance feature.

I am not an IT professional, please advise what setting I have to make to have a real life fail over where nobody cut or remove the ethernet cable, only no data coming or going on the wire. Thank you very much !

 

[fozters]

Yes I believe it will take some time to get more advanced functions to load balance configuration. For example dedicated wan for remote service to function properly. It might take 6 months or a year or some funtions might never come to the router unfortunately because Asus seems to be the one most interested of the 3G/4G dongle support and load balance. So many people have different needs and so it's also understandable if some options we might never see.

I have a homeserver upgrade in the plans maybe later this year and I'm already thinking about alternative routes to get fully working dual wan load balance with failover functionality with more advanced remote services options availibility in mind i.e. dynamic dns, vpn for dedicated wan port, static connection from some ip to some ip from dedicated wan port etc.
( I tried to play with the load balance routing rules but if I set for example Source IP 192.168.0.99 and destination I leave blank so it gets value ALL when applied, then the machine 192.168.0.99 does not have a working internet connection at all)
I've been thinking ClearOS as option for more robust dual wan loadbalance gateway.

In the mean time I might to have to settle to dual wan failover. Maybe even use 3G as primary because 3G I have seems to have pretty stable connection 20Mbit/3Mbit max instead of DSL 7Mbit/1Mbit max. I myself am not a network expert but I do work with server HW and you might guess how much I see red as 3G for primary connection instead of some sort of fixed more static internet connection

I am not an IT professional, please advise what setting I have to make to have a real life fail over where nobody cut or remove the ethernet cable, only no data coming or going on the wire. Thank you very much !

I have phone line DSL as the other connection and I can confirm that when I set to failover mode. When I unplug rj45 between RT-AC66U and and adsl modem the failover works as it should even without watchdog enabled!
And when I unplug the rj11 cable between adsl modem and phone socket the failover does not work even when the watchdog is enabled!
Even though the syslog and gui seems to recognize this! (The syslog and GUI does not recognize anything if the ping watchdog is not enabled).

Apr 27 11:59:45 WAN Connection: WAN was exceptionally disconnected.
Apr 27 11:59:45 stop_nat_rules: apply the redirect_rules!
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq[539]: exiting on receipt of SIGTERM
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq[677]: started, version 2.68 cachesize 1500
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq[677]: asynchronous logging enabled, queue limit is 5 messages
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq-dhcp[677]: DHCP, IP range 192.168.0.100 -- 192.168.0.150, lease time 1d
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq-dhcp[677]: DHCP, sockets bound exclusively to interface br0
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq[677]: read /etc/hosts - 5 addresses
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq[677]: using nameserver xx.xx.xx.xx#53 (<--- correct for 3G)
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq[677]: using nameserver xx.xx.xx.xx#53 (<--- correct for 3G)
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq[677]: using nameserver xx.xx.xx.xx#53 (<--- correct for 3G)
Apr 27 11:59:49 dnsmasq[677]: using nameserver xx.xx.xx.xx#53 (<--- correct for 3G)


I have not figured how to test the failover other way around because when I unplug the dongle the router reboots atleast with .40 fw. I already tried stainless cooking pot over the dongle but that fu**er does not lose its connection any other more sophisticated ideas ?

I tested also dd-wrt kong for my asus router. You might give it ago as to try how it does work with failover, if it's crutial for you at this point. I went back to Merlin because of the working load balance mode which dd-wrt does not seem to have atleast with 3G out-of-the-box. My 3G was anyway working out-of-the-box with dd-wrt.

 

[vsandric]

Hi everybody,
I found these very useful tread, as I am trying to configure similar network.

I want to deliver ADSL and 4G connection to asus rt68u router. But when I turn on Load Balancing mode it seems like I have problem with DNS, because i can ping for example 8.8.8.8 but cant load any page on web?!?

ADSL->router static IP
4G -> router automatic IP

please for some advise on how to configure router...

cheers

 

[lostwind]

I have a similar setup,

Primary WAN = CABLE
Secondary WAN = 3G

Shortly after configuration (day or two), connections from WAN to internal hosts are timing out and the fix is to either disable dual wan or reboot the router... some kind of messes with routing for dual wan. I've messaged Gary, waiting for a response to see if there's a ticket/defect for the issue and the time line for it to be addressed.

I really rely on on connecting to my network from outside and its not working well... by the way, connections from outside (when work) only connect to primary WAN, never secondary.

 

[shdwkeeper]

Has anyone ever got this working on a R7000 using DD-WRT? I would love to know how to do this with a U600 3G USB Modem. I've tried everything and can't get it to work. Now if I choose from the drop down (Connection type) Mobile Broadband my 3G USB Modem works perfectly, so I know its supported just don't know how to setup the failover/failback for it in DD-WRT. It worked on an ASUS router but the ASUS firmware is buggy as hell and kept locking up on my on multiple routers. R7000 hasn't locked up once.