Use several Static Routes or a Virtual Server when load balancing on ER7206?

Use several Static Routes or a Virtual Server when load balancing on ER7206?

Use several Static Routes or a Virtual Server when load balancing on ER7206?
Use several Static Routes or a Virtual Server when load balancing on ER7206?
a week ago - last edited Friday
Model: ER7206 (TL-ER7206)  
Hardware Version: V2
Firmware Version:

I am a part of P2P file sharing system hosted by a web site.

My client has a "registered" IP address (my ISP1's IP address) and a port number. The IP and port number are used by the site to check if my client is authenticated and the site will put my client "online" for its file sharing.

The client is an app that runs on one of my host machines on the LAN.

 

I'm not sure exactly how they work it, but randomly the IP address of their "keep alive" site will change ( <- This is important).

It might be using a proxy like nginx for the front end and the replies come from actual server's IP address instead of the frontend IP. 

I don't think it's the replies that are hurting me.

I think it's the ER7206 have 2 ISP IP addresses (ISP1 is registered) for load balancing and redundancy (WAN and WAN/LAN1). The "outbound" traffic from the client will go out on either interface (WAN or WAN/LAN1) and the site will never authenticate the client and put it online

 

My work around has been to use Static Routes.

The site's keep alive server's IP address shows up in the app's log file, and I've been adding static routes to match them when I see that my client is offline. 

I'm up to 7 static IP addresses. And I don't know how many IP addresses they use for a keep alive server. And, I only know if the client is offline when I manually open the site's status page for my client (I've been checking it 2 or 3 times per day).

 

I've tried using a Virtual Server, and assigning "WAN" (ISP1) as the "Interface". But that didn't seem to work. 

I did disable all the Static Routes when the Virtual Server was online, but after about 15 min client was still "offline" (normally, it takes a minute or less for the client to come online using static routes). 

 

Suggestions?

 

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Re:Use several Static Routes or a Virtual Server when load balancing on ER7206?-Solution
Friday - last edited Friday

  @ticedoff 

Thank you for your post. I think you could consider setting up policy-based routing instead of static routes, so that your clients only go out through a specific WAN interface to communicate with the peer. Please refer to this guide on configuring policy-based routing:

How to configure Policy Routing on Dual WAN Router using the new GUI

How to configure Policy Routing on Omada Gateway via Omada Controller

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Re:Use several Static Routes or a Virtual Server when load balancing on ER7206?-Solution
Friday - last edited Friday

  @ticedoff 

Thank you for your post. I think you could consider setting up policy-based routing instead of static routes, so that your clients only go out through a specific WAN interface to communicate with the peer. Please refer to this guide on configuring policy-based routing:

How to configure Policy Routing on Dual WAN Router using the new GUI

How to configure Policy Routing on Omada Gateway via Omada Controller

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Re:Use several Static Routes or a Virtual Server when load balancing on ER7206?
Tuesday - last edited Tuesday

Reading through the Configuration Guide for "How to configure Policy Routing on Dual WAN Router" it seems like it would work for what I need.

I already have the load balancing setup and working properly between WAN1 & WAN2 in the ER7206.

 

But I have a (simple?) question:

If I follow the setup example in Steps 1, 2 & 4 of that Configuration Guide for 1 system's IP address (192.168.0.2) and it's port 15730 to be routed to WAN1 24x7, will every other port on that system be load balanced between WAN1 & WAN2?

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Re:Use several Static Routes or a Virtual Server when load balancing on ER7206?
Tuesday

  @ticedoff 

Your understanding is correct.

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