How to setup 2 ISP "redundant" connections on ER7206
I've been using the ER7206 for a while as a simple FW / Router with 1 ISP.
I now have two ISPs: ISP-New is fiber (1Gbps symetrical) and ISP-Old (300Mbps down / 100Mbps up) and I would like to use both for a little while.
The ER7206 (V1) seems to have the ability to use 2 WAN connections. But, I may be misunderstanding what I'm seeing in the "Network" > "WAN" page.
I can't seem to actually change one of the LAN ports to a WAN port.
Is there someplace I need to remove a port from "LAN" to make it "Avaliable" in the WAN Mode screen?
The setup page "Transmission" > "Load Balancing" already has the box "Enable Load Balancing" checked. I would expect to see a 2nd WAN port someplace.
Lastly - Is the "Load Balancing" in the ER7206 v1 really Active / Active (traffic on both ISP links) or is it just an ISP "failover"?
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Just do it. I went ahead and checked the box for "WAN/LAN1" in "Network" > "WAN" > "WAN Mode" page and saved it.
That caused a reboot, but despite the warning, it came back online without any issues.
After the reboot, I check and it had created a new VLAN (vlan9043), mapped it to port-2 (UNTAG) and then port-2 on the WAN page is labeled "WAN". It may have done more internally, but that's the most significant things I noticed.
Next, I want to "Network" > "WAN" > "WAN" and checked its settings for up/down bandwidth speeds (1000000 Kbps (1Gbps) for up/down) and then checked the up/down bandwidth speeds for "WAN/LAN1". NOTE: The defaults for the up/down speeds is 1Gbps. You might want to keep that in mind even if you don't have 2 ISPs, because my ISP-Old is actually much slower and I never changed it. So, now I set "WAN/LAN1" (ISP-Old) to up 100000 Kbps (100Mbps) / down 300000Kbps (300Mbps) to reflect the ISP's rates.
Then, I went to "Transmission" > "Load Balancing" > "Basic Settings" and checked the box for "Enable Bandwidth Based Balance Routing on port(s):" and selected "WAN" and "WAN/LAN1". At this point, it looked like both links were up, both "WAN" and "WAN/LAN1" were listed as "online", the routing table showed the route to 0.0.0.0 as the Default GW for each ISP and "Status" > "Traffic Statistics" showed both "WAN" and "WAN/LAN1" had significant amounts of traffic on each link.
I tried setting a "Link Backup" with "WAN" as "Primary" and "WAN/LAN2" as "Backup", but the seemed to break the load balancing. So I disabled it.
I don't know if there is more to do. I can't find a KB article that goes into detail on this. And, while I think it's working, there might be something I need to set that would make it better.
Otherwise, I guess that's all there is to it.
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I noticed there are two VLAN configured by default ("Network" > "VLAN"):
ID 1, VLAN ID 1, Name "lan1", Description "LAN1" with ports 2 through 5, all untagged.
ID 2, VLAN ID 4094, Name vlan4094, no description with only port 1 (untagged).
Based on this, I presume that "vlan4094" is equal to "WAN" and "vlan1" is equal to "LAN1"
Back in the "Network" > "WAN" page, when I check both "WAN" and "WAN/LAN1", port 2 becomes a "WAN" port.
But does this mean that port 1 and port 2 are now (basically) the same and can be used for load balancing, or is this just a way to allow each new (unique) VLAN it's own ISP?
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Just do it. I went ahead and checked the box for "WAN/LAN1" in "Network" > "WAN" > "WAN Mode" page and saved it.
That caused a reboot, but despite the warning, it came back online without any issues.
After the reboot, I check and it had created a new VLAN (vlan9043), mapped it to port-2 (UNTAG) and then port-2 on the WAN page is labeled "WAN". It may have done more internally, but that's the most significant things I noticed.
Next, I want to "Network" > "WAN" > "WAN" and checked its settings for up/down bandwidth speeds (1000000 Kbps (1Gbps) for up/down) and then checked the up/down bandwidth speeds for "WAN/LAN1". NOTE: The defaults for the up/down speeds is 1Gbps. You might want to keep that in mind even if you don't have 2 ISPs, because my ISP-Old is actually much slower and I never changed it. So, now I set "WAN/LAN1" (ISP-Old) to up 100000 Kbps (100Mbps) / down 300000Kbps (300Mbps) to reflect the ISP's rates.
Then, I went to "Transmission" > "Load Balancing" > "Basic Settings" and checked the box for "Enable Bandwidth Based Balance Routing on port(s):" and selected "WAN" and "WAN/LAN1". At this point, it looked like both links were up, both "WAN" and "WAN/LAN1" were listed as "online", the routing table showed the route to 0.0.0.0 as the Default GW for each ISP and "Status" > "Traffic Statistics" showed both "WAN" and "WAN/LAN1" had significant amounts of traffic on each link.
I tried setting a "Link Backup" with "WAN" as "Primary" and "WAN/LAN2" as "Backup", but the seemed to break the load balancing. So I disabled it.
I don't know if there is more to do. I can't find a KB article that goes into detail on this. And, while I think it's working, there might be something I need to set that would make it better.
Otherwise, I guess that's all there is to it.
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Hi @ticedoff8
We do have a FAQ but the key word is "link backup.
Check here:
How to configure Link Backup on Dual WAN Router using the new GUI
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