TL-ER5120: Bandwidth based balance routing does not work

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TL-ER5120: Bandwidth based balance routing does not work

This thread has been locked for further replies. You can start a new thread to share your ideas or ask questions.
TL-ER5120: Bandwidth based balance routing does not work
TL-ER5120: Bandwidth based balance routing does not work
2018-07-25 03:12:50 - last edited 2021-04-20 11:33:00

Hello, 

 

I am running a TP-Link TL-ER5120 router with 4 WAN connections, two fiber and two 4G LTE. I've been trying to enable bandwidth based balance routing, but it does not seem to work. WAN3 and WAN4 are consistently under-utilized, even though I have set the second and third highest bandwidth for those WAN's. Could some-one help me? Do I have something mis-configured?

 

My setup is as follows

 

Hardware Version: TL-ER5120 v3.0

Firmware Version: 3.0.2 Build 20180125 Rel.35267

WAN1: 300Mbps fiber connection, uses PPPOE. Upstream and Downstream bandwidth set to 300,000 in the WAN config page

WAN2: ~10Mbps 4G connection. Upstream and Downstream bandwidth set to 75, 000 in the WAN config page

WAN3: ~10Mbps 4G connection. Upstream and Downstream bandwidth set to 100,000 in the WAN config page

WAN4: 100Mbps fiber connection, uses PPPOE. Upstream and Downstream bandwidth set to 200,000 in the WAN config page

Enable Load Balancing is checked in the Transmission->Load Balancing->Basic Settings page

Enable Application Optimized Routing is unchecked in the Transmission->Load Balancing->Basic Settings page

Enable Bandwidth Based Balance Routing is checked in the Transmission->Load Balancing->Basic Settings page, with WAN1, WAN2, WAN3, WAN4 selected

There are no Link Backup Rules

Online Detection for all wans is set to auto

There are no active Policy Routing rules

Enable Bandwidth Control is not checked, there are no Bandwidth Control Rules

 

Actual WAN usage for the most recent few days is 

LAN: LAN

Transmitted Data:           7957.87 MB        7.7714 GB

Received Data:                 225.00 MB          0.2197 GB

Total Data:                         8182.87 MB        7.9911 GB

 

WAN1: fiber

Transmitted Data:           251.36 MB          0.2455 GB

Received Data:                 6901.67 MB        6.7399 GB

Total Data:                         7153.03 MB        6.9854 GB

 

WAN2: 4G

Transmitted Data:           29.62 MB            0.0289 GB

Received Data:                 882.30 MB          0.8616 GB

Total Data:                         911.92 MB          0.8906 GB

 

WAN3: 4G

Transmitted Data:           8.47 MB               0.0083 GB

Received Data:                 144.02 MB          0.1406 GB

Total Data:                         152.48 MB          0.1489 GB

 

WAN4: fiber

Transmitted Data:           10.63 MB            0.0104 GB

Received Data:                 72.45 MB            0.0708 GB

Total Data:                         83.08 MB            0.0811 GB

 

Screenshots of the config follow

 

 

 

 

 

 

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#1
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Re:TL-ER5120: Bandwidth based balance routing does not work
2018-07-25 14:55:05 - last edited 2021-04-20 11:33:00

Hi FriedDesk

 

Generally the traffic ratio of multiple WAN ports should be close to the bandwidth ratio of mutiple WAN ports. But since the same connection will be transmitted from the same WAN port, so if the data traffic of this connection is large, the data traffic of a single WAN port also will be large. Are you using some applications that use a lot of traffic?

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#2
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Re:Re:TL-ER5120: Bandwidth based balance routing does not work
2018-07-26 03:20:25 - last edited 2021-04-20 11:33:00

The earlier stats screenshot did have some amazon prime viewing & some file downloads. But I see this consistently (over several months), with mixed usage. 

 

To eliminate the effects of a single large download, I reset the statistics and checked again after a half day of mixed browsing with no large downloads. This is the usage from my home network of 2 Windows PC's, 4 android phones and 1 android tablet, 1 iphone and 1 ipad. The usage would have been normal internet browsing, whatsapp, smtp/imap, and the usual android/windows updates & update checks.

 

This still shows a traffic ratio that is not close to the bandwidth ratio

 

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#3
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Re:Re:Re:TL-ER5120: Bandwidth based balance routing does not work
2018-07-27 16:06:35 - last edited 2021-04-20 11:33:00

You can try to switch the WAN. There may be surprises.

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Re:Re:Re:Re:TL-ER5120: Bandwidth based balance routing does not work
2018-08-04 03:12:22 - last edited 2021-04-20 11:33:00

Andone wrote

You can try to switch the WAN. There may be surprises.

 

Thanks I swapped WAN2 and WAN4, WAN4 (the second fiber connection) utilization is up now. I'm unsure if that is bandwidth based balancing working, or if that's just a variant of the previous behavior where WAN1 and WAN2 were being used much more than WAN3 and WAN4. But it's good enough for now

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#5
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