Solved DUAL WAN - with regular R45

[dffvb]

Hi there, I dont know how to put this: Many Asus router have a USB port supporting 4G/5G tethering, somehow being declared as dual WAN (for failover). The Question I have has anybody succeeded in "abusing" this for a regular second WAN via a NIC? First thing which would come to my mind, would be a simple USB NIC. However I doubt this would work, so the next thought would be, to know what Android uses for USB tehtering, and if something like this would be open source etc be integrated in lets say an Alpine Linux where you bridge it with a first NIC?

Has anybody experience with this? Is it possible? Impossible?

Thank you in advance

P.S.: After doing my obligatory search if this has been discussed before, I am seeing a lot of problems, with dual WAN, so no too sure how stable this would work by default?

 

[bennor]

There are several Asus support docs if you haven't seen them already that cover Dual WAN.

[Specification] How to check if the ASUS router supports the Dual WAN feature? | Official Support | ASUS Global

[Wireless Router] Dual WAN introduction and setup - Failover and Load Balance | Official Support | ASUS Global

[Wireless Router] How to set up a smartphone to share the network to the router (USB Tethering)? | Official Support | ASUS Global

The Asus forum section here has many posts on Dual WAN/Dual WAN Failover and the various issues with the feature, both in the stock Asus firmware and in the Asus-Merlin/Gnuton fork firmware. There is a addon script (WANFailover) for Dual WAN Failover that may be of interest if using Asus-Merlin firmware.

WANFailover - Dual WAN Failover ***v2 Release***

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

PS: I tried using USB tethering with a USB hotspot adapter to setup Dual WAN a while back on a RT-AC68U and it was hit or miss on working properly. The USB tethering (eventually) worked but the failover was spotty. Found my old post about it here:

Using Alcatel Linkzone 2 in USB mode with Asus Router

Family member borrowed a Alcatel Linkzone 2 (T-Mobile apparently) from their local library to see if it provides better broadband than their DSL service. They've tested the Linkzone 2's USB-C port direct to their computer's USB port and can access broadband. Windows 10 shows it connected as...

www.snbforums.com

 

[dffvb]

Thank you, I was udner the impression it would work only with USB, this is from one of your links. Thanks again topic solved. No need for quirky workarounds.

 

[Tech9]

no too sure how stable this would work by default

In most cases it just fails to detect up/down connection state and as a result may not adequately switch connections. This is the main issue the script above is addressing. If you really need reliable multi-WAN with fail over/back plus load balancing - you need different equipment.

 

[dffvb]

Thanks @bennor for the update, and also thanks @Tech9