Other Manufacturers → Other Help with Dual WAN Load Balancing with ASUS RT-AC68U. Uniqs 9666: Share « BCM4708 and BCM4709 vs Marvell MV78230-B0. Other Is my TP Link TD-8616 dying? If you want to use the 2 WAN connections at the same you have to chose the option Load Balancing. Make sure to put correct data in the field Max Bandwidth provided by ISP. And for the Network Service Detection, whatever IP you chose make sure that it replies to ping and will not give false positive for WAN failure.
The performance and features of the Asus Dual WAN varies per build that Asus releases, I recommend using the latest stable build released by Merlin, though in the screenshots below I am using 384.3_alpha3-g0462c71.
You can find Merlins builds here: https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/
Beware that Merlin has no control over Dual WAN, so issues will need to be reported directly to Asus.
The main issue I noticed when using Dual WAN in load balancing mode is occasionally slow page loading time, failing to load assets, switching between modems at inappropriate times or not loading at all. To work around this issue you can either specify a route for every single device that connects to your router (a lot of hassle!) or use the following work around that forces all devices to use one of the connections.
The basis of this guide is to force all traffic onto either the Primary or secondary WAN by using routing rules. This guide is by no means a final solution and can be adapted in multiple ways.
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In my scenario I only want a few devices to connect to the secondary ISP. All my home smart devices and non essential devices will be forced to use the primary ISP preventing them using the bandwidth of my main computer and other important devices which will exclusively use the secondary ISP that I have connected to LAN port 2 of my Asus AC68U.
Stage 1 – DHCP setup and manually assigned IP
- Go to the LAN page on your Asus admin Dashboard.
- Limit the IP Pool to between 192.168.1.2 – 192.168.1.127
- Assign all devices that you want to use your secondary connection IPs above 192.168.1.127. I haven’t tried but maybe it is possible to assign them 192.168.2.* and leave the IP Pool ending address as 192.168.1.255.
- Devices without a manually assigned IP will now only get a local IP from 192.168.1.2 – 192.168.1.127
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Enable Dual Wan Asus
Stage 2 – Dual WAN setup
Asus Dual Wan Load Balance Problems -
- Go to the WAN page.
- Make sure Dual WAN is on and check you have the secondary WAN on the correct port.
- Select Load Balance and check Enable Routing Rules.
- The Load Balance configuration is slightly redundant at this point as we will be forcing devices to the primary or secondary connection in the routing rules, so you can leave the ratio as whatever you want.
- Add the following rules:
- Source IP: 192.168.1.1/25 Destination IP: all WAN unit: Primary WAN
- Source IP: all Destination IP: 192.168.1.1/25 WAN unit: Primary WAN
- Enter the rules for any devices that you wish to always use the Secondary WAN, using the manual IPs you assigned earlier.
- Click Apply.
- Below is a screenshot of my setup. The red box shows that all devices without a manual IP assigned IP will use the primary WAN. All the important devices in the blue box will use my Secondary WAN. This is handy for me as my personal (secondary) connection remains unaffected by visitors or new devices connecting to my network.
Let me know if you have any issues setting this up in the comments.
If you come up with another way of setting this up I’d be extremely interested to hear!
Unfortunately I can’t play around with my settings too much as the internet is nearly always in use by others, so I’m interested in your findings.
In my scenario I only want a few devices to connect to the secondary ISP. All my home smart devices and non essential devices will be forced to use the primary ISP preventing them using the bandwidth of my main computer and other important devices which will exclusively use the secondary ISP that I have connected to LAN port 2 of my Asus AC68U.
Stage 1 – DHCP setup and manually assigned IP
- Go to the LAN page on your Asus admin Dashboard.
- Limit the IP Pool to between 192.168.1.2 – 192.168.1.127
- Assign all devices that you want to use your secondary connection IPs above 192.168.1.127. I haven’t tried but maybe it is possible to assign them 192.168.2.* and leave the IP Pool ending address as 192.168.1.255.
- Devices without a manually assigned IP will now only get a local IP from 192.168.1.2 – 192.168.1.127
[adinserter block=”2″]
Enable Dual Wan Asus
Stage 2 – Dual WAN setup
Asus Dual Wan Load Balance Problems -
- Go to the WAN page.
- Make sure Dual WAN is on and check you have the secondary WAN on the correct port.
- Select Load Balance and check Enable Routing Rules.
- The Load Balance configuration is slightly redundant at this point as we will be forcing devices to the primary or secondary connection in the routing rules, so you can leave the ratio as whatever you want.
- Add the following rules:
- Source IP: 192.168.1.1/25 Destination IP: all WAN unit: Primary WAN
- Source IP: all Destination IP: 192.168.1.1/25 WAN unit: Primary WAN
- Enter the rules for any devices that you wish to always use the Secondary WAN, using the manual IPs you assigned earlier.
- Click Apply.
- Below is a screenshot of my setup. The red box shows that all devices without a manual IP assigned IP will use the primary WAN. All the important devices in the blue box will use my Secondary WAN. This is handy for me as my personal (secondary) connection remains unaffected by visitors or new devices connecting to my network.
Let me know if you have any issues setting this up in the comments.
If you come up with another way of setting this up I’d be extremely interested to hear!
Unfortunately I can’t play around with my settings too much as the internet is nearly always in use by others, so I’m interested in your findings.
They are usefull in environments with multiple simultaneous connections, where different transfers can be routed over different external IP addresses, effectively doubling the combined speed of all simultaneous transfers. One notable exception is using P2P software, or other similar programs that open multiple connections for the same download.
The most common load balancing routers support per-destination or per-packet balancing. Per-destination load balancing means the router distributes the packets based on the destination address. Given two paths to the same network, all packets for destination1 on that network go over the first path, all packets for destination2 on that network go over the second path, and so on. This preserves packet order, with potential unequal usage of the links. If one host receives the majority of the traffic all packets use one link, which leaves bandwidth on other links unused.
Per-packet load-balancing means that the router sends one packet for destination1 over the first path, the second packet for (the same) destination1 over the second path, and so on. Per-packetload balancing guarantees equal load across all links. However, there is potential that the packets may arrive out of order at the destination because differential delay may exist within the network.
Some business grade routers may also support unequal cost load-balancing (IGRP and EIGRP routing processes), setting preferred routes, OSPF cost, BGP path selection algorithm, etc.
Note: Reportedly, some older residential dual-wan routers may have buggy implementations, causing some issues with VoIP,VPN and even SSL connections, especially if using per-packet balancing.
rate: avg: I have a 'limited' dual WAN setup working with BitTorrent. A torrent client should be assigned to one WAN interface exclusively for it to work well. I use source local IP and source port ranges (set in advanced settings of µTorrent) to accomplish this, and have two clients seeding for each IP. Automatic load balancing where the client can establish connections via both WANs didn't work well enough. Remote peers eventually saw both of my IPs and tried to establish new connections to the one that was currently not connected to them. When my peer received the new connection, the previous one having the same peer-id was terminated, the peer was 'kicked' by my client, and the new connection took its time to ramp up to full speed (subject to latency and TCP slow start). The WAN interfaces kept switching around like this every few minutes. I use MikroTik 'Per Connection Classifier' to distribute other connections (not bittorrent). The 'both addresses' mode is the safest. A pair of hosts local and remote always use the same interface. |
