Backup WAN Health Check.

[BeachComber1]

I keep a 50Mbps WAN backup incase the main fiber connection goes out.

Best laid plans. Fiber went out and apparently Backup WAN had been out for a while. I assumed the health checks were also performed on the Backup WAN. Obviously I assumed wrong.

Found you could not even run a ping over the Backup WAN from the Balance.

Is there a way that the health checks/pings/dns lookups can be run on the Backup WAN as well to let you know there might be an issue before you actually need it that i have somehow overlooked?

[Michael234]

Your router can do exactly what you want. The Health Check is an attribute of the WAN connection, each WAN can be configured with different Health Check parameters.

[sitloongs]

There is depend the WAN type and the product model that you are using.

For Balance series Ethernet WAN/Fiber , if you set the WAN as backup, it will be in disconnected state (Cold Standby)

For Balance Series , Mobile Internet WAN/Cellular, you can set the backup WAN as “Remain connected (Hot Standby) or Disconnect (Cold Standby”

For MAX Series , Ethernet WAN/Cellular/WIFI WAN, you can set the backup WAN as “Remain connected (Hot Standby) or Disconnect (Cold Standby)”

Notes:

• Backup Remain Connected WAN, WAN health check will continue run.
• Backup disconnect WAN , WAN health check will not work or no traffics can be sent.

Hope the explained your question ^^.

WAN heath check reference :

Health Check Mechanisms Against Link Failure

The objective of this article is to explain how the different health check methods work, and how to configure them. Health Checks are used to detect the Internet link’s logical connectivity. Without health checks, ISP routing issues may not be detected, thus failover may not perform smoothly. Health Check Methods: PING: The router will send a ICMP/PING packet to the specified IP address (or host name) to test WAN connectivity. DNS Lookup: The router will perform a DNS lookup to the specified…

[BeachComber1]

@sitloongs

For Balance series Ethernet WAN/Fiber , if you set the WAN as backup, it will be in disconnected state (Cold Standby)

Sounds as if I cannot run Health Checks on my Backup then, which is what I found.

This is an issue as it does not alert you to issues prior to needing them.

Need a way to keep them hot, but only use as backup

[sitloongs]

@BeachComber1

You can set both the WAN as Priority 1 and use the “Priority” outbound policy to send all traffics to Fiber WAN and fail-over to backup WAN when it’s down. This will make sure all traffics will forward using Fiber WAN and failover to backup WAN

[BeachComber1]

Ok, real life situation happened today.

Fiber Main/50Mbps backup

Fiber cut. 50Mbps configured as backup did not activate taking entire network down. Only when disconnecting Fiber in 710 and setting Backup to On/Priority 1 did it supply data.

Not thrilled

[sitloongs]

May I know WAN health check for the Fiber WAN showing failed ? If not, you may need to fine tune the WAN health check to detect the failure. In some cases, the WAN health check is set the provider end network as the health check target , if the issue not related to the provider network then the fail-over may not be triggered.