Going to dual wan with Ubiquity EdgeRouter 4 - easy for me ?

[chrisbati]

Hello,

I plan to go for dual wan with an ER-4 router.

I need some advice, not about the fact to choose dual wan, but more on how easy is it to set up dual wan with the ER-4.

I read some posts about the dual wan configuration and sometimes it seams easy for me (automatic with the wizard configuration) and sometimes absolutely not (configuration with command line).

I'm not a "tech" user so basically almost everythyng has to be within a gui.

My network configuration is quite basic:

- a router, a switch connected to the router and all my devices connected to the switch.

Thanks in advance for your advices.

Kind regards,

Chrisbati

 

[Tech9]

Why ER-4 and what dual WAN - load balance or fail over? What's the rest of your networking gear? I lost track in Ubiquiti updates, but there are cheaper and easier GUI routers with multi-WAN capabilities. TP-Link SafeStream ER605 (TL-R605) is around $60 and it does multi-WAN on up to 4 interfaces.

TL-R605 | SafeStream Gigabit Multi-WAN VPN Router | TP-Link

TL-R605 supports Gigabit Ethernet connections on both WAN and LAN ports and multiple VPN protocols and high-security, high-performance VPN capabilities, making employees’ remote connections to their main offices as secure as if they were in the main office.

www.tp-link.com

 

[chrisbati]

Why ER-4 and what dual WAN - load balance or fail over? What's the rest of your networking gear? I lost track in Ubiquiti updates, but there are cheaper and easier GUI routers with multi-WAN capabilities. TP-Link SafeStream ER605 (TL-R605) is around $60 and it does multi-WAN on up to 4 interfaces.

TL-R605 | SafeStream Gigabit Multi-WAN VPN Router | TP-Link

TL-R605 supports Gigabit Ethernet connections on both WAN and LAN ports and multiple VPN protocols and high-security, high-performance VPN capabilities, making employees’ remote connections to their main offices as secure as if they were in the main office.

www.tp-link.com

Thanks for your answer.

This is my network infra:

- 2 modem cables
- 1 router Netgear WNDR3700 (also used as switch); It will be replaced by an asus rt-ax86u in a few hours
- 1 switch Netgear GS716T-300EUS
- 2 switch Netgear GS108V3
- 1 switch Netgear Nighthawk S8000
- 1 Repeater Netgear EX8000
- 1 Repeater Asus Rp-AC68U

I read a lot of reviews that made me think er4 is the best "quality-price" for me, great spec and sfp port.
The idea is to add the er4 between the two cables modem and the netgear gs716t which is the main switch.

 

[Adooni]

ER-4 is very good option same basic load balance and fail over you can setup from gui https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/205145990-EdgeRouter-WAN-Load-Balancing but more advanced option need to be setup manually. It is true that you can do almost everything with ER but more advanced setups are done via console. It is not issue for polish speakers as @Shibby moved from tomato to ER-12 and is preparing tutorials for us. I can tell that Ubiquity devices are not as easy to setup as Asus and similar but if you have it working are very stable.

if you do not like to use command you can look at UDM PRO https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052548713-UniFi-UDM-USG-WAN-Load-Balancing-and-Failover but it is different price range and now is supporting fail over

TL-R605 do not have much experience with TP-Link routers basically but on different forum users are asking for alternative firmware for it and have challenges with VPN for example. This could be fixed with same soft update. I would think TL will be easier to setup than ER.

From your 2nd answer I see you are planning to use load balance and fail over. Before you make decision look in web look at specification to make decision what is easy/ feasible for you to setup. Ubiquity ER are not easy compering to Asus.

 

[Tech9]

This is my network infra:

What Internet speeds the two ISP services provide? Asus routers offer Dual WAN in theory, but it never worked reliably for fail over in my tests. I personally use Netgate SG-5100 and Cisco RV345P for Dual WAN fail over. Never failed and switch seamlessly between connections. Different price point though.

 

[hitt]

ER-4 is very good option same basic load balance and fail over you can setup from gui https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/205145990-EdgeRouter-WAN-Load-Balancing but more advanced option need to be setup manually. It is true that you can do almost everything with ER but more advanced setups are done via console. It is not issue for polish speakers as @Shibby moved from tomato to ER-12 and is preparing tutorials for us. I can tell that Ubiquity devices are not as easy to setup as Asus and similar but if you have it working are very stable.

if you do not like to use command you can look at UDM PRO https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052548713-UniFi-UDM-USG-WAN-Load-Balancing-and-Failover but it is different price range and now is supporting fail over

TL-R605 do not have much experience with TP-Link routers basically but on different forum users are asking for alternative firmware for it and have challenges with VPN for example. This could be fixed with same soft update. I would think TL will be easier to setup than ER.

From your 2nd answer I see you are planning to use load balance and fail over. Before you make decision look in web look at specification to make decision what is easy/ feasible for you to setup. Ubiquity ER are not easy compering to Asus.

Also the UDM Pro does not support load balancing at the moment. It only supports 'Failover Load Balancing', which moves data flows to the secondary WAN connection when the first loses connectivity. No word yet on when it gets proper load balancing to allow data to flow over both ISP's at the same time.

I have the UDM Pro and am looking at how I can load balance two ISP (400/400Mbit fibre and 200/20Mbit Virgin Media) connections. From the research I have done so far, a lot of the lower cost routers that allow dual (or quad) WAN connections don't provide enough throughput for me to achieve the 600Mbit total connection I am going for.

I wanted to see if anybody had recommendations for a router that is able to support load balancing across 2 WAN connections and is able to deliver a good throughput. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Adooni]

hm I just found movie showing for UDM PRO Weighted load balancing option but you need to setup it on WAN2

at 3min of movie

as you have 400 and 200 ISPs I would check how this operate at 33%, 25% and 50% - let us know what difference you see I have 1 SPN and to be honest never plan to have 2 and cannot test it

 

[hitt]

Thanks @Adooni
Whilst the video you have provided shows how to do weighted load balancing, this option disappeared in later updates to the UDMPro. UniFi is terrible with updates and you often find things changing or disappearing. Just being able to change WAN (1 and 2) settings in some instances won't allow you to save the new config. When it is working, it is excellent, however when you want to change config, you often find issues.
I'm going to give this a go again with a separate SFP+ module, as right now the UDMP is not even seeing the other WAN connection at all!
I'll drop an update in here with the results

 

[hitt]

No luck with this at all. The SFP+ port appears to be completely unresponsive. I did have it set up some time ago when I first got the UDMP so that I could test the failover; but that was just using a ethernet dongle plugged into my phone to try it out. Since then there have been a few updates and the ability to load balance has disappeared, it only supports failover.

I'm not going to spend too much time trying to work this out . . I've spent a couple of days trying to get it working to no avail . . .
Any recommendations on an external dual WAN router?
It doesn't need any functionality beyond being able to manage two WAN connections and feed these into a single WAN port on my UDMP. The UDMP can take care of all the content filtering and security restrictions.

 

[Trip]

@chrisbati - This is coming from an EdgeMAX integrator (30+ EdgeRouters still in the field). If you haven't yet purchased an ER-4, I would definitely look elsewhere. While initial config can be done via GUI wizard (per Ubiquiti multi-WAN guide), any further changes will need to be done via the contextually-ambiguous GUI config tree and/or CLI itself. Sure, you can likely get a working config running with minimal effort, but if you have any technical issues, or discover a bug along the way, you're basically going to be SOL and dependent on what little help there is left in the stagnating EdgeMAX forums...

For this use-case, a TP-Link TL-R605 would probably be a better fit. If you wanted more feature flexibility and/or CPU-routing power, and cost was less of a concern, I'd also look at a pfSense or Untangle Home Pro, either as a pre-built appliance, or on SFF or embedded PC hardware (Qotom, etc.).

 

[Adooni]

if you want to connect it to UDM Pro you can consider ER-4 (if not ER-12). not sure if there is a point to keep UDM Pro at all in you situation. I know a lot people that using Dual WAN with ER-4/ER/12 and are very happy.
hear you have example how to set for ER same special load balancing https://openlinksys.info/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=22457 (you would need to translate from Polish to English but I see google is not doing it bad.