Activation Required

Product Discussion Pepwave MAX
1

I just bought the MAX-UTG-U1 thinking I could connect more than one USB Modem into it and share the connection. When I connect a second USB modem into the WAN 2 slot I see an error in the router screen that read (Activation Required). The router works fine with one USB modem connected but not two. Please help I need this for an event on Jan 6.

Thanks,

2

The U1 SKU indicates it only supports 1 active USB modem. If you would like to unlock the other 3 you can purchase the license key here:
http://store.peplink.com/software-add-ons/link-load-balancing/load-balancing-license-key-for-max-on-the-go.html

3

With this Key I will be able to also combine up to 4 USB modems and use all 4 of their bandwidth?

4

Yes, It will essentially just unlock the other 3 USB slots for use and you will be able to use all SIMs for traffic distribution.

5

So just to confirm how it works. Once I buy the Load Balancing Key I can connect 4 USB modems and use the bandwidth of all 4 modems? Example each modem downloads at 10 mbps, I can then get a total download bandwidth of about 40 mbps?

6

Hello,

With just MOTG-U4 it will load balance. You will still be able to utilize all 40mbps of bandwidth however it will be in a round robin fashion. You would not achieve a full 40Mbps download with just load balancing on a single data session. If you want to bond the connection you will need to have MOTG-U4-SF license. This involves our SpeedFusion technology. Essentially you would need to create a SpeedFusion VPN to another SpeedFusion capable device which will create a VPN tunnel and this will allow for bonding and session persistence to take place.

Additional information on SpeedFusion:

7

So I would need this http://store.peplink.com/software-add-ons/speedfusion-bonding/load-balancing-and-speedfusion-bonding-license-key-for-max-on-the-go.html
plus another hardware device?

If I do not et the SpeedFusion what would the Mac download speed be on the router? Whatever a single Cell Modem can download?

8

Correct on your thinking with that license and another hardware device. We do have software you can connect it to as well (FusionHub). Which can be deployed on a local VM or the cloud.

If you do not use SF, most speedtests will take into account that you have multiple WAN’s and may still give you speed results of all 4. This also ultimately depends on how you are routing traffic out of the MOTG as you can control traffic using outbound policy rules. Typically if you wet to weighted balance which spreads traffic in a round-robin fashion and do a speedtest you may see close to 40Mbps for download speed. If using Priority/Enforced algorithm, you will only see 1 WAN download speed as it is sending that traffic over a specific WAN every time.

9

Hello, I have the same uncertainties, but go further…

Honestly, I don’t want to buy another hardware device, instead I prefer to try the wan smooth first, I have the MOTG also and I was wondering…:

  1. This license key is for unlimited time?
  2. There is any way of bond bandwiths (speedfusion) without buying another MOTG?
  3. let’s say I buy a Wan smooth (Load balancing) license, This will balance only the 4 USB dongles available or will balances the 4 USB dongles PLUS WAN 5 (DSL cable connection) PLUS wifi WAN?
  4. in case I decide to buy another MOTG and try SpeedFusion (remember I’m planning to get Load Balancing Licence bought at 300$…can I pay only the 200$ for the upgrade to Speed fusion (500$) ? or should I pay full 500$ and loose my previous investment?
  5. In case of trying speed fusion the license will cover the 2 MOTG or is required to buy one license 500$ each?

Finally, I really appreciate if you can help to define What exactly I need for a decent HOME internet. ALL my ISP are worst in the world in terms of bandwidth, just want to make it better merging what I have. What I actually have is listed above I my plan is to try the load balance and see if I can improve stability and bandwidth.

10

Please be mindful that bonding is different from balancing.

Bonding is making one aggregate pipe out of multiple smaller pipes. For simplicity, I will refer to this as a “big pipe”. The deal with a big pipe is that it ONLY works if you have something on the other end of it. You can use a virtual machine in a cloud provided service. OR, you can place a Peplink device on an internet connection large enough to handle your big pipe.

Balancing is what you would most likely be doing in a home environment. That means things like - when this little pipe is at full load, start second traffic to pipe 2. Or, send all https traffic down this pipe and send all http down that one. OR, send all youtube stuff down WAN1, and send all Xbox connections down WAN2.

That being said, there are some scenarios where you can achieve a “big pipe” with just balancing. One example is to use a weighted balance on http traffic. Have even weights for each WAN set to 1, and then the http traffic will go one session per WAN. An Xbox makes 4 concurrent tcp sessions for large game downloads, so my end result is full capacity on both links for a single download. I have found that many large downloads use a similar strategy. Apple uses two for iOS downloads.

I hope this clears things up a bit. I don’t feel that there is any intentional misleading with the marketing. It is just dictionary terms that have similar meanings but are technically very different that can be difficult to decipher.