TekSavvy → Best dual WAN router

Can anyone suggest an easy-to-configure Dual WAN router.
I'm running both Teksavvy Cable and DSL.
I prefer using something that is low on power consumption vs a PC solution like pfSense or ClearOS.

I'm currently using Tomato DualWAN 1.23 EN but it is outdated and the newer versions are in Chinese and the author of the firmware won't release the source-code. Are there any other good dual WAN firmwares for the Linksys WRT54GL?

I am a happy camper with Draytek Vigor 2820n (I am also running DSL + Cable with TSI)

The only thing that is missing in Draytek Vigor 2820n is true load-balancing where you can set 50% of traffic to go via DSL - 50% via Cable. It is possible of course with some tweaks (setting explicitly lower speed for Cable for example so router is forced to balance closer to 50/50) but there is no built-in method.

Heard good things about Syswan Duolinks routers but these have no built-in Wi-Fi and no built-in DSL modem which Vigor does have.

»doc.pfsense.org/index.ph ··· alancing

pfsense runs great on the Alix boards, consuming well under 10 watts.

My buddy just bought this guy: »www.newegg.ca/Product/Pr ··· 24160CVF

And is going to try it for load balancing his current Bell DSL and his upcoming TekSavvy cable.

+1 on the alix boards I got two of them running.

what about the Peplink

»www.peplink.com/balance/ ··· ch-spec/

anyone ever tryed those

im running the same and its awesome rv042

I've never tried it, but there is an english version of Tomato DualWAN 1.28 (530) for MIPSR1 routers here: »code.google.com/p/digila ··· ads/list

Edit: Just tested it (tomato-K26-1.28.0530-MIPSR1-4M-eng.trx) on my WRT54GL, works fine

I've installed a few Cisco RV042 for customers. Only one of them uses it for dual WAN tho, the others use it for the VPN server it offers. So far no problem, might be a bit expensive however.

I had a problem with the RV082 here at my work, its the 8 port version. I have 12/2 Cable and dsl for backup, but it could barely muster just a hair over 1mbit upload on the cable connection. No help from Linksys/Cisco, they dont upgrade firmware on them.

Odd. No idea how my customer's upstream is, but he gets his 40-50 Mbits downstream out of his 50 Mbits Videotron cable. Did you ever try RMA'ing it, just in case?

Could also consider the FortiNet FortiWiFi 60C..?

I'm on a unique DSL account that I'm hesitant on giving up, but unfortunately it's been going down a couple of times a week lately. So I've been thinking of getting cable as a backup.

How does the Cisco RV042 work for this?

I'd prefer to have it set up for backup. Have one account as the primary, and then the second account as the backup, with fallback only when the primary goes down. However, I'm seeing online that it doesn't work very well, so I'd be better off just load balancing?

Either that or just get a different DSL account alone and hope it works more stably. Or else a cable account alone, and scrap DSL altogether.

HiVolt, I know you have had problems with your cable due to McNicoll's congestion, but did your line actually get disconnected? Or was it just slower speed? Were dropped packets an issue? Has your DSL been rock solid?

P.S. What about VPN? What 3rd party software is needed? On the network at home there is a NAS and an iMac I'd like to have access to.

You can try one of these:
»www.mitxpc.com/proddetai ··· 254LM350

Great choice for the price - way more power than you need for load-balancing, but on another hand you can use any load-balancing solution your heart desires - you can even have Windows do load-balancing if your heart so desires (although don't know why it would).

4 LAN ports is also an automatic winner. Mitxpc has less powerful models too, but you'd save like $10-$20 on them. Atom shouldn't use too much power and you can probably make it a NAS also if you wanted (space for 2 x 2.5" hdds). Did not buy one yet, but will once paypal finishes processing my money transfer

What software would you run?

I was thinking about using pfsense. The reason why I wanted a Linux box is because I wanted to be able to customize it the way I want to (I.e. Unlimited newsgroups servers only allow 1 IP login at a time, so the solution for a load-balancing setup is to make newsgroups traffic go to one server via modem A and go to another seever via modem B, utilizing both connections for unlimited newsgroups downloads - need 2 accounts for this).

>I was thinking about using pfsense. The reason why I wanted a Linux box is

PFsense is Free BSD based. It isn't running Linux unless you mean unix-ish.

One could use VLAN in a managed switch (or the cheapest router with DD-WRT to get at the VLAN setting) instead of multiple Ethernet interfaces.

usenet:
1) usenetserver.com doesn't care about multiple connections. i used to have 2 usenet accounts until I found out about this.
2) any dual wan router that is capable of policy based routing will meet your requirement if you decide to keep your current usenet provider.

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back to the original topic:

i'll keep supporting pfsense until something better comes up. so far, even enterprise firewall software packages (>$50k) have a hard time competing in certain areas. my pfsense box is an old laptop with a broken screen. the screen would cost $80 to replace, i can buy the same laptop used for $80 so it is not economical to fix it.

instead of throwing it out, it's my firewall. there's only one ethernet port so i vlan LAN, DSL1, DSL2 and 3web-cable on a single trunk to that port.

pay for third party vpn? pfsense has ipsec, l2tp and openvpn which will inter-operate with other vendor's vpns. client to site is also a non-issue.

i am a huge fan of squid proxy that can run on pfsense. i've configured it to save large files so anyone that tries to download the same thing gets the cached version. while normally a moot point, this becomes valuable when you have 5+ ubuntu systems which all get HTTP updates a few times a month: after the first system does the update, the updates are cached for everyone else and come across at near wire speed. this saves time and bandwidth. best part: there's no end PC configuration as the squid proxy is transparent and is already running on the network's default gateway.

my uses for pfsense only scratch the surface. out of the ~100 available packages, i only have 3-4 installed.

This would be a good time to ask about pfSense dedicated hardware.

I heard mention of "Alix" boards. But, where do I find these? Are there various models/brands?

I'm just trying to find a solid low-profile, low-power (and possibly low-cost) hardware router that can take pfSense. Any specific suggestions and maybe a rough idea where to buy them?

i get mine from xagyl communications in ottawa, they've always been good to me,

My recommendation would be to use an Alix with pfsense, then if you want more public IP's, purchase statics, and add them as virtual IPs....

I got a Syswan, I used to load balance cable and DSL (have since cancelled DSL due to monetary reasons). But when it was up, it was great. It can also do load balancing on uploads, a feature which many dual-wan routers do not have, like the Linksys RVs.

Lets you load balance by bytes, packets, sessions or IPs.

The only thing missing is built-in MLPPP, so you'd still have to use it in combination with another router.

My mistake I guess - I was under the impression that there was a Linux version as well. Oh well, like I said - I'm still looking into this. I have nothing against FreeBSD, but would have preferred Linux for this.

I've explored the DDWRT option and it will work, but I want something a bit more expandable/configurable.

1) Looked into usenet server already, but I heard they started cracking down on this, so did not want to risk it. Besides, I've been with Astraweb for years and another $11 for a second unlimited account is not unbearable. I also know a server with $5/75GB block traffic that allows multiple IPs, but I did not get there yet. Signup takes seconds, so I'll do it if I need it.

2) I wanted something proven good and configurable - I did not want to pay almost as much for something more limited with possible firmware issues. DDWRT could be a solution as well, but I opted for a Linux (or FreeBSD) box instead - especially if I want to do something more advanced, like running VPN (I know DDWRT can do PPTP), detailed traffic logs, possibly can put nzbget on that as well, etc.

The PF in PFSense stands for Packet Filter. That's pretty much a BSD-ish thing. »www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/ I would love to see PFSense get ported too. My dockstar would be a better router than most other plastic ones in its price range.

DualWan.cn firmware with English translation are available here: »code.google.com/p/digila ··· ads/list It has quite a bit of flexible in the load balancing settings.

One of the things you could do for DD-WRT, Tomato (which dualwan is from), OpenWRT is to use opt-ware to provide a linux directory tree to run packages. »www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki ··· HomePage There are tons more packages than PFSense.

I also recommend xagyl. Awesome service, and my orders always arrive in under a week if the stuff is in stock.

If you're looking for a prebuilt, check out netgate.com. I've never shopped from them, but they do support the pfsense project, and most or all of their m1n1wall models are pfsense on alix hardware. You would be hard pressed to build it yourself at their prices.

Wow. Nice link. I've used the M350 case in a few builds and I like it a lot.

Ya, but do the SATA ports support port multiplier?

I was only commenting on the case. Unfortunately I know nothing about the board inside, although the serial port is a nice touch for a firewall unit.

Still trying to decide which board to go with as a base. It does not look like there is anything better out there than pfsense, so it would have to run freebsd. Alix 2D3 runs both fine and all that, but I'm a bit concerned that it might not be able to handle the load-balancing very well due to the slower CPU.

If I say wanted to load-balance two 50Mbit connections, I don't think those Alix boards would be able to provide 80Mbit speeds via load-balancing over multiple connections...

The speed tests on the pfsense forums also suggest that it can do about 85Mbit/s transfer of clear text, but that does not account for load-balancing, which could be CPU-intensive.

Alix boards seem to be quite old as well and when the technology is that old, there is bound to be something newer and better these days.

Going to investigate the possibility of running *BSD on one of the MITXPC builds.