5GEE Router and DSL

[Eddie563]

Hi thanks for taking the time to look in on my post. I'm a bit of a Geek!

Dual connection failover capability is my requirement.

Previous setup

Ubiquiti UDM-Pro

1Gb Virgin Cable

76Mb Vodafone DSL 

Current setup

Ubiquity UDM-Pro

5GEE Mobile Broadband

76Mb Vodafone DSL

As it is, everything works a treat, but there is something dripping in my head that I have an expensive piece of kit on my desk that may be able to be done by the 5GEE router itself.

I understand to enable the WAN port on the 5GEE router, its an advanced setting. I have all my PPPoE details, so thats fine.

My query is three fold.

1. If I enable the WAN port and plug in my DSL connection (BT Modem) does that give me dual connections.

2. If so, which does it prioritise? The faster 5G connection or the slower DSL connection?

3. It is my assumption that the connections would be monitored and would failover when one of the services was down.

It's a head scratcher but given the way we work after lock down, this could become a valid question for a lot of people.

Thanks again for taking the time to read my post.

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Eddie563 ,

I recommend to obtain the manual for the exact model of your 5GEE router to check if it supports dual-WAN load-balancing.

I suspect many consumer-level routers will not support dual-WAN load-balancing but at best would keep the mobile WAN as fail-over and use the wired connection as the main internet connection.

If you are interested in dual-WAN load-balancing, I would recommend to look into either DrayTek dual-WAN load-balancing https://www.draytek.co.uk/information/our-technology/load-balancing

or OPNsense multi-WAN which will require additional hardware (or virtualization if you prefer and trust that route for a security appliance) https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/multiwan.html

I initially favoured the DrayTek solution for its single-box simplicity but came across mockery of its firewall functionality. I've since gone with OPNsense and highly recommend Zenarmor-Sensei that can be added.

At the moment, I've got the OPNsense firewall in the Netgear MR1100 DMZ which seems to take quite a load off the router. I've not yet bitten the bullet to pay an additional GBP 14/mth to get a FTTP second WAN as I don't believe I have such a requirement at the moment based on the usage Insight which OPNsense is recording.

[Eddie563]

I have the UDM-Pro which can do it.

I called the tech support and they had to escalate it to answer the question. The answer is.

The 5GEE Router can have a DSL connection plugged in to it. It will favour 5G and failover to DSL only if it gets no signal.

[mikeliuk]

Hi @Eddie563 ,

Do you have one of the Huawei CPE Pro or Huawei CPE Pro 2, or the new 5GEE Router 2021 which apparently might be the Zyxel NR5103 (I've not yet been able to locate the manual for the Zyxel).

I do indeed see one reference saying the UDM-Pro supports WAN load-balancing so would be interested to hear how you get on. If one is paying for two connections and already owns the hardware, it seems pretty logical to get that configured so that you benefit from the expense already incurred. I've held back a little as I'm aware that configuring and debugging such things can take either no time, or a lot of time. (Perhaps in the OP, you've said you have this configured already which is great.)

https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052548713-UniFi-UDM-USG-WAN-Load-Balancing-and-Failover

From a technical perspective, I think it would be better that the more capable device should handle the load-balancing functionality as you would likely want to configure the flows to account for different bandwidth capacities of each of the connections and may want to favour a wired connection for latency sensitive applications (e.g. voice and video meetings).

I can see the attraction in having load-balancing done by a dumb device with dedicated hardware switching but going in that direction, you would probably want a device entirely dedicated to that, and not a device whose primary function is as a consumer-grade router (or CPE).