PepVPN Status speed tests testing only one WAN at a time / ?ug only

Nicola_Barrocu · August 3, 2022, 4:48pm

Hello,

I finally have my Balance 30 Pro connected to my FusionHub EC2 instance.
I noticed something strange and I wonder if it’s by design or some wrong setting of mine:

The balance 30 Pro has three WANs, that when speedtested directly (without the peplink) one at a time give me these speeds:

an FWA 100/20
Starlink, 160-270 / 20-40
Mikrotik LTE modem 5-30 / 5-30

Before setting up the FusionHub, I had them all “Always on” in Load Balance. Speedtest from a PC in the lan would give random speeds as expected, depending on which WAN was assigned at the moment to the PC.

After I setup PepVPN, I did as testing an outbound policy in the Balance Pro Enforcing PepVPN WAN for one particular IP (my test PC).
speedtest.net would give me correctly the Elastic IP and speeds like 70/40, with or without AES256 enabled in InControl2 (shouldn’t it be faster without AES256?)

Now when I go to SpeedFusion status page and I run the upload/download test, it seems like it’s testing only one WAN at a time: is this normal? Is it combining ALL the WANS in the Fusion tunnel?

Here it shows all three connections connected (Always on, priority 1)

Here instead, after pressing Status, only one is green and the others show in yellow, one disabled and one back up:

But here they are set all as Always on:

Here, where I do the test, again only one at a time, and I can actually chose which one to test but never all together:

Why is the PepVPN status page not showing all the 3 connections green, where else they could have been one “manually disabled” (EOLO) and one set as backup (LTE) ?

How do I test the total combined throughput of all WAN’s together, assuming that the FusionHub is actually getting traffic from all 3 wans? How can I make sure that is happening, otherwise?

Thank you!

Nicola_Barrocu · August 3, 2022, 5:13pm

Ah, after posting I dug into Incontrol2 in the Speedfusion settings and found a place where WAN’s are listed and a priority can be assigned (they were 1,2,3,4 but EOLO was actually 1, Starlink was 2, whereas in the Previous screen shot EOLO is yellow (manualyl disabled?)). In any case I don’t seem to be able to put all at 1 because of a license problem, is that it? With a solo license I cannot send all my WANs into the FusionHub tunnel?

But then back in the Balance Fusion status, it says “No PepVPN profile selected”, and there’s no way to select the FusionHub profile that I created in InControl2!

Sorry I am very confused now… All I am trying to do is to combine my three WANs in the faster possible FusionHub connection, using the speed of all 3 if they are all online, or only those that are online without interruptions.

zegor_mjol · August 3, 2022, 5:27pm

The bonding and smoothing features of SpeedFusion require that the Balance 30 Pro installs a separate license, BPL-031-PRO-LC-SF. In its absence the connection will employ only one of the B30Pro WANs at any given time (hence the inability to place more than one WAN in a particular priority).

The FusionHub Solo license does not prevent multiple WANs being employed.

Cheers,

Z

Nicola_Barrocu · August 3, 2022, 6:04pm

Ha! But then what type of bonding could happen with only one WAN, or actually, one WAN at a time? What’s the point to use one solo license, setting the WAN priority in the profile, vs not using speedfusion at all and setting priority algorithm in the Network setting? shorter handovers when the main connection fails? The situation I have is that all my three WAN’s are BAD, with multiple short (10-20 seconds) blackouts / day. When I don’t use FusionHub I have several seconds blackouts before the Balance assigns me another WAN. With only a solo license what advantage do I have?
Here at this link FusionHub Solo: A Complimentary FusionHub License for Every Peplink User
it says “The FushionHub Solo brings SpeedFusion to your mobile or small branch office without the need for additional hardware. Install it in your cloud service of choice, and experience unbreakable connectivity and unparalleled speed with bandwidth bonding!”

zegor_mjol · August 3, 2022, 8:07pm

The FusionHub Solo license is free, and if you have bonding hardware at one end (either through licensing or a model that comes with that functionality) then it allows you to set up multi-WAN bonding lines to the internet without additional hardware. (as the description says).

Other SpeedFusion features that do not rely on multiple WANs being bonded are available even in the absence of such a license throughout the model lines.

One such example that we employ a lot is the creation of a multi-site internal VPN defined as a hub-and-spoke topology, all established at the drop of a hat using SpeedFusion and IC2. Some of the links are bonded, some are not.

Definitely useful, without having to pay the bonding license premium where we don’t need it.

For your use case it sounds like the bonding feature of SpeedFusion is something that would be very useful to you, in which case the additional license (or a switch to a different Peplink model coming with the license when sold) seems to be called for.

Cheers,

Z