RT68U: best Dual WAN settings?

[Nocturnal]

Hi,

I have an RT68U and I installed the latest Merlin release on it, hoping to stabilize the Dual WAN feature. Unfortunately it is as unstable as the stock ASUS code. Primary WAN drops for no apparent reason. I understand WANs go down, that is why I have two. I know my Comcast cable connection does not go down every hour or so.

It seems there is a lot of chatter in the log for a router that should just sit there serving traffic. No new connections being added, no new hosts. Why all this DHCP checking on the WAN connection?

<I had pasted a log section but this forum only allows short posts so I removed it>


There are some (undocumented) options for Dual WAN. What are the recommended settings? If those don't exist, should I use Watchdog? This was required on my Cisco RV42 which would only fail over on complete link failure (very rare) but not when the link stayed up but the WAN connection was bad (not so rare). I have watchdog enabled on the RT68.

I could surrender and go back to using my RV42 but I'd give up WAN speed in that case. My cable modem has GbE and over wifi I've measured 110Mb/s over speedtest.net. Not possible using the RV42.

Any tips appreciated. Thanks!

Sander

 

[speedbump]

For what it's worth I have tried to setup a a wan through my android phone on the rt-n66u with the latest firmware 43.

My results are:
1) as soon as I plug the phone into USB the router resets the LAN, WLAN and USB ports, not sure if the whole router reboots, or just the ports get reset.

2) the phone reports that tether is in place but I get no connectivity to internet

This is with the regular WAN disconnected.

 

[3dguru]

Hi,

I have an RT68U and I installed the latest Merlin release on it, hoping to stabilize the Dual WAN feature. Unfortunately it is as unstable as the stock ASUS code. Primary WAN drops for no apparent reason. I understand WANs go down, that is why I have two. I know my Comcast cable connection does not go down every hour or so.

It seems there is a lot of chatter in the log for a router that should just sit there serving traffic. No new connections being added, no new hosts. Why all this DHCP checking on the WAN connection?

<I had pasted a log section but this forum only allows short posts so I removed it>


There are some (undocumented) options for Dual WAN. What are the recommended settings? If those don't exist, should I use Watchdog? This was required on my Cisco RV42 which would only fail over on complete link failure (very rare) but not when the link stayed up but the WAN connection was bad (not so rare). I have watchdog enabled on the RT68.

I could surrender and go back to using my RV42 but I'd give up WAN speed in that case. My cable modem has GbE and over wifi I've measured 110Mb/s over speedtest.net. Not possible using the RV42.

Any tips appreciated. Thanks!

Sander

What is your normal line status? Without the router connected.

What type of WAN's do you have? (Cable, DSL etc.)

Personally I use 1 Cable, 1 DSL lines, and with a torrent download I get the total combined download speed if I set the load balance 1:1, even the connections are 25Mb and 15Mb, I get 40Mb full speed on torrents.

 

[Nocturnal]

My primary is Cable, measured at about 110 Mb/s down. Secondary is U-verse, probably 5 Mb/s down. Because of the large speed discrepancy I have it set to failover mode rather than load balancing.

I'm not sure what you mean with 'normal line status' but both WAN connections are normally up.

It would be nice to be able to use my phone as a tethered 3G modem but that's way down the list of what I'm trying to achieve.

 

[3dguru]

My primary is Cable, measured at about 110 Mb/s down. Secondary is U-verse, probably 5 Mb/s down. Because of the large speed discrepancy I have it set to failover mode rather than load balancing.

Have you tried load balancing with 22:1? It will mostly use your primary wan, for about 96.5%, but if primary failed, it will use secondary 100%. Also you can still use Routing Rules to specify one WAN for a DHCP client.

Do you have "Enable VPN + DHCP Connection" setting enabled? It should be disabled in most setups.

You might also try Mac Cloning...

 

[Nocturnal]

I read somewhere that with such a high speed discrepancy it was better to use failover. Now I can't find that. Perhaps there was a version of the manual that covered Dual WAN and I can't find it right now. I will try the large load balancing ratio.

I don't know how to disable that VPN + DHCP setting. I don't see it on my router. What settings page is it under? I did see that openvpn has one running server and there appears to be no way to disable it. All openvpn toggles are 'off'. I did change the DHCP query frequency on the WAN settings to Normal. It was set to aggressive for some reason.

Thanks for your help!

 

[3dguru]

I read somewhere that with such a high speed discrepancy it was better to use failover. Now I can't find that. Perhaps there was a version of the manual that covered Dual WAN and I can't find it right now. I will try the large load balancing ratio.

It says on the Dual WAN Settings page... But it works as a failover for me, too. You can try, if it works, buy Merlin a beer.

I don't know how to disable that VPN + DHCP setting. I don't see it on my router. What settings page is it under? I did see that openvpn has one running server and there appears to be no way to disable it. All openvpn toggles are 'off'. I did change the DHCP query frequency on the WAN settings to Normal. It was set to aggressive for some reason.

Sorry for the VPN+DHCP setting confusion, it is for DSL only.