RT-AC68U Dual wan question

[scmikes]

I am looking at buying the RT-AC68U, largely because of the dual wan support.


I have 2 ISP providers, one fast, one a bit on the slow side.

I work from home, so I have the slow one largely for a backup. Either ISP would get the job done.

I just wanted to ask what is your experience with dual wan support for load balancing.

Thanks
Michael

 

[Nerre]

I don't have any experience, but true load balancing is only possible with support in both ends. Since you have two ISPs you will never get true load balancing.

What you get is sine kind of pseudo balancing where some devices use one connection and other devices use the other. But as far as I understand you will not get an automatic "move" from one device to the other depending on the load (such a move would in any case interrupt all current connections, because the external IP address for the connection would change).

 

[tonibg]

I don't have any experience, with load balancing too, but for now I could not go and get success in my attempts with fail over Dual Wan mode.
I guess in the future.....

Regards

 

[glitchsys]

Curious about Dual WAN myself

Ok so my current setup is my 50mbps/5mbps cable modem and then I have a 6mbps/1mbps DSL modem as backup. I work completely from home as a Linux Administrator and my internet is mission critical to my income, thus my 2 internet connections coming across 2 different medium's (cable vs phone lines).

I currently have an RV042 v1 dual wan router, sometimes I'm in balance mode, most of the time I'm in failover mode (balancing is weird), with the cable modem being my primary. It also has 5 or 6 active ipsec tunnels to various locations for work. I'm having wireless issues so I was looking at getting the RT-AC68U router. I was going to just put it into "AP" mode and let the Linksys RV042 handle the connections and NAT'ing and routing, etc. but then I'd be wasting a lot of the RT-AC68U's potential, and now I see it supports Dual-WAN.

I can't find many people who use this router for its DualWAN capability though. I found one forum post and it mentioned all sorts of fun little issues with Dual WAN and an Asus router, but the post was from October of 2013. This RT-AC68U has had 2 or 3 firmware updates since then.

So can anybody tell me, have they used it successfully as a Dual WAN router? Has anybody tested failover, load balancing, etc. with it? I considered ditching the DSL connection and getting a 3G/4G USB modem as a backup and plugging it into the USB port of the RT-AC68U, that'd be an interesting backup solution as well. From what I read Asus seems more focused on the USB modem feature than the Dual WAN feature, can anybody confirm how well the Dual-WAN using a usb 3g modem as a backup works?

 

[ogo]

Asus is selling RT-AC68U as a failover capable device. I quote from ASUS site "Dual WAN enables having two connections/ISPs on one router, with load balance and failover mode for added stability and redundancy to ensure uninterrupted internet access."
http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTAC68U/

In fact the router is capable only for SWITCHOVER. When you disconnect manually the primary network cable the router is able to commute on secondary network. And back on primary when you connect the cable.

The RT-AC68U IS NOT CAPABLE OF FAILOVER AT ALL !!!
It is not able to detect by itself a lost connection and commute on secondary.

I am a owner of RT-AC68U who report the issue to ASUS one month back and no solution yet. They still mislead the customers on there site about a capability they are not providing with this router.

 

[Preskitt.man]

Wouldn't be load balancing (nor failover), but if you setup the routing table appropriately, you could direct traffic to specific destinations over specific links, if that would work for you.

 

[RMerlin]

Asus is selling RT-AC68U as a failover capable device. I quote from ASUS site "Dual WAN enables having two connections/ISPs on one router, with load balance and failover mode for added stability and redundancy to ensure uninterrupted internet access."
http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTAC68U/

In fact the router is capable only for SWITCHOVER. When you disconnect manually the primary network cable the router is able to commute on secondary network. And back on primary when you connect the cable.

The RT-AC68U IS NOT CAPABLE OF FAILOVER AT ALL !!!
It is not able to detect by itself a lost connection and commute on secondary.

Make sure you have an up-to-date firmware. There is now a configurable watchdog which should handle that scenario.

 

[SNB_UK]

firmware: 3.0.0.4.378_4585-g44c234f
Any one got this feature to work ? I've found that the AC68u looses the IP address of the WAN ip after a few hours, I've swapped the WANs around and found it affects the primary and secondary WAN. I've switched it back to single WAN where it works fine. This is happens when they are set statically or dhcp.

Also it doesn't failover even with the watch dog set.

The IP address appears as 0.0.0.0 in the status screen, but is set to the WAN ip if you check the config page.

What are your experiences?

 

[L&LD]

firmware: 3.0.0.4.378_4585-g44c234f
Any one got this feature to work ? I've found that the AC68u looses the IP address of the WAN ip after a few hours, I've swapped the WANs around and found it affects the primary and secondary WAN. I've switched it back to single WAN where it works fine. This is happens when they are set statically or dhcp.

Also it doesn't failover even with the watch dog set.

The IP address appears as 0.0.0.0 in the status screen, but is set to the WAN ip if you check the config page.

What are your experiences?

Suggest to drop testing this obsolete version.

 

[SNB_UK]

L&LD, it's the latest Asus firmware build. Is there a better version available ?

 

[L&LD]

L&LD, it's the latest Asus firmware build. Is there a better version available ?

No, not by a long shot.

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Networking/RTAC68U/HelpDesk_Download/

Even the RMerlin 378.55 firmware would be better (or the john9527 or hggomes forks too).

 

[SNB_UK]

Wow, didn't realise that. I'm 4 releases behind. The "check firmware" button told me it was up to date
I've just applied the latest and greatest. I'll look at the Merlin releases too, although I'm not a fan of custom roms normally.

Thanks!

 

[L&LD]

Wow, didn't realise that. I'm 4 releases behind. The "check firmware" button told me it was up to date
I've just applied the latest and greatest. I'll look at the Merlin releases too, although I'm not a fan of custom roms normally.

Thanks!

Clicking the check firmware button is a waste of time.

The link I gave is the latest, but if you want the most likely to be stable firmware, RMerlin or one of the forks based off of his work would be my pick.

 

[SNB_UK]

Yep, I 2nd that !

I'll take a look at Merlin's, as I'm not really a bleeding edge type person. It needs to work well and be reliable.

 

[RFC1795]

New here, came across this post via a google search for details on dual wan on the RT-AC68U. My internet failed midday Friday, called my ISP who informed me they'd only be able to get an engineer out the following Tuesday!
Unacceptable as I work from home. Off to Currys I go, picked up a 4G EE Osprey device.
It wasn't what I was after in terms of having a USB plugged into the router acting as backup, figuring I'll switch between the two as and when needed. It would have to do.

So, today I plugged it into the router USB port just to see out of interest as to what it would do. I was pretty surprised to see it recognised as a USB modem, clicked it into dual WAN mode, and wow, it just worked once settings updated. It was pretty straight forward really.
I unplugged my ISP wan connection, and everything just carried on working as normal. Very impressed!

I would leave it like this, but the only concern I have, is that it is on a 15Gb/m rolling contract and am worried that it might go over this. Its been on for 8 hours and is over 650Mb of usage, and that's during the quiet time when the kids are at school. So, I'm looking to set it into failover mode. I'm running Merlin which I installed 10 minutes after unboxing my router when I got it not long ago. (Wanted the extra functionality of DD-WRT which I'd used before on an old router) ... So, I'm hoping that failover will work once I work out the settings. The comments above are a bit worrying in that it won't work, but who knows, this is a rather old thread so maybe things have changed

Edit: FYI, my internet was back up and running when I got home at 7pm the Friday - doh!

 

[SNB_UK]

I've found that the dual WAN on these routers doesn't work, I've tried the most up-to-date Merlin.

 

[RFC1795]

I've found that the dual WAN on these routers doesn't work, I've tried the most up-to-date Merlin.

It's working well for me in load balance mode... maybe too well. After close on 10 hours I had to turn off the 4G modem (USB backup), as I was already over 1.5Gb of usage there. I suspect if I messed around with the 'Load Balance Configuration' numbers that it might help things. I couldn't find any specific documentation on that, ASUS highlighted it in their online instructions, but don't say what the numbers are for or what they mean. Default is 3:1, which I'm guessing is use primary at 3 to ratio of 1 on secondary. No idea what the ranges are either, can I go 50:1 - who knows - meh.

I'll have a go at setting up the failover sometime soon and see how that handles, for now I'll just leave the 4G device powered down till I find some disruption time to mess about in.

My version of Merlin is at 378.55 which is what I suspect you're also running there, with no routing rules. Not a lot of settings there to compare with, WAN is primary, USB secondary.

Here's something that might be different. My ASUS router range is 192.168.0.0/24 .. the 4G device is 192.168.1.0/24 ... I changed the ASUS range to make migration from the old router a breeze without having to setup each device with new SSID, passwords etc. It was all transparent to everyone, when they got home, they just worked as normal. If both devices have default IP ranges that are the same, I'm wondering if that could be the cause of issues mentioned above?
The cool part is that I can get to both the ASUS RT, and the 4G modem on their .1 addresses from the browser without having to change wifi connection.

 

[texashoser]

I've found that the dual WAN on these routers doesn't work, I've tried the most up-to-date Merlin.

Correct. Merlin doesn't touch the dual WAN code in the ASUS releases, so unless ASUS fixes it in a future release, which they haven't in two years, this will never work. Here's my latest post on the subject:

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/ha...ncing-issue-found-in-ac87r.24864/#post-208876

 

[SNB_UK]

Correct. Merlin doesn't touch the dual WAN code in the ASUS releases, so unless ASUS fixes it in a future release, which they haven't in two years, this will never work. Here's my latest post on the subject:

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/ha...ncing-issue-found-in-ac87r.24864/#post-208876

Ah - should've done more research before buying.

 

[texashoser]

Ah - should've done more research before buying.

To be clear, dual WAN in failover mode is working for me, but with the watchdog function disabled - which really devalues the failover capabilities.

In the last week I've finally been able to make some progress with their engineering team. They've stated that the PPPoE error on my ATT static IP connection is a bug. They tried to claim that the "DHCP did not function correctly error" was either the watchdog host or my ISP dropping the connection due to excessive ICMP packets. I told them if the connection were being dropped due to that, I shouldn't be seeing DHCP errors, just a plain disconnect. I also pointed out that if their theory was correct, if I turned off the watchdog feature and pinged the same watchdog host at the same interval from a computer behind the router, then I should see the router behave exactly the same. It doesn't, of course. The connection is never dropped and the logs indicate this.

So... They are trying to recreate the problem. Have no idea how long it will take.