ER605 Load Balance doesn't work properly with a degraded WAN connection

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ER605 Load Balance doesn't work properly with a degraded WAN connection

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ER605 Load Balance doesn't work properly with a degraded WAN connection
ER605 Load Balance doesn't work properly with a degraded WAN connection
2022-02-02 14:20:06
Model: ER605 (TL-R605)  
Hardware Version: V1
Firmware Version: 1.1.1_20210723

I've purchased the ER605 router in order to get a load balance / failover capability for my home office setup. I've got two ISPs: a fiber 1000/1000 Mbps and an ADSL coax 600/50 Mbps. With the router in standalone mode, I enabled the Load Balance option with the two WAN connections properly configured. My ADSL connection has serious noise (SNR) issues a few times every day, leading to massive packet losses (40-60%) when that happens, so I was hoping that the Load Balance feature would just route all the network traffic to my fiber connection when the ADSL has problems, but it doesn't seem to work that way. The problem is, the router doesn't seem to detect the increased latency and massive packet losses of the ADSL connection in those occasions and keeps sending traffic to it, degrading the performance of ALL the clients.

 

The only workaround I could find was to disable Load Balance and enable Link Backup with my fiber connection as primary and the ADSL as secondary, using Online Detection mode set as manual (pinging Google's 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4), so I would use the ADSL just as a backup in case my fiber connection fails. However, I'm not convinced this approach will work 100% of the time, plus the Online Detection takes at least 30 seconds to detect a disconnection and it's not guaranteed that it will consistently detect packet losses.

 

I was hoping the Load Balance feature could provide a simpler, smoother way of distributing traffic based on the quality of each WAN connection, and not just on their state (connected/disconnected), so in case it detected persistent packet losses, it should not continue to send traffic to the offending WAN.

 

 

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Re:ER605 Load Balance doesn't work properly with a degraded WAN connection
2022-02-03 05:59:45

@AlexVi 

I don't think load balance is so smart. You can consider using load balance together with policy routing, let the main fiber be your main network, and then set policy routing to let some important networks use the main fiber, and avoid using ADSL lines as much as possible

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Re:ER605 Load Balance doesn't work properly with a degraded WAN connection
2022-02-03 15:40:15

Hi @Yannie,

 

Thanks for the suggestion, though I think the Link Backup function that I'm currently using is doing something similar to what Policy Routing provides, without the need of defining what specific services and IPs a given rule applies to.

 

It's a pity that Load Balance doesn't seem to detect major packet losses issues in one of the WANs connected.

 

Cheers,

Alex

 

 

 

 

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