B One SpeedFusion Hot Failover configuration questions (lots and lots of questions...)

[MartinLangmaid]

@avic

if indeed “lowest latency” is used for the default, then what are the upload and download WAN speeds used for?

The least used Algorithm.

@avic

I assume that when/if either WAN fails, the default policy will automagically route via the remaining active WAN, and if so a new session will have to be established with the remaining active WAN?

Yes if a WAN fails sessions on that WAN will terminate and need to be rebuilt, new sessions get sent over the other active WANs.

@avic

in the B One interface the only place where I could see a “Hot Failover” logo is in the “Advanced > SpeedFusion VPN”

This is used to connect to your own remote appliances. So between your device and another physical device at another location, or between your physical appliance and a virtual FusionHub appliance you can install in the cloud.
I have an old FusionHub setup video here that you might find enlightening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxZBWloVizM

Hotfailover is the consequence of having more than one active WAN link in priority 1 on the dashboard, AND then having those healthy WANs used at the same time inside of a Speedfusion VPN tunnel (or SFC tunnel), AND then sending your traffic over that VPN link.

If speedfusion has more than one active WAN in simultaneous use, traffic flowing over it can hot failover between those WANs.

@avic

but I could also not find any configuration selection/option for “Hot Failover” selection anywhere…

Have more than one WAN, enable SFC and you’ll have hot failover.

Peplink SpeedFusion Connect Protect Setup for Seamless Failover

@avic

I turned on “WAN Smoothing” to “Normal” as it said that it will use twice the bandwidth, and I assume that this is how it would do the “hot failover” by sending double the packets one through each of the two active WAN connection. is that correct? or will it consume my SpeedFusion data and $$$ twice as fast?

WAN smoothing duplicates traffic, it is not hot failover. You consume double the bandwidth to ensure a sent packet gets to the other side. Used when WAN links have lots of packetg loss.

@avic

but if I do not have “Smoothing” turned on, will I have the uninterruptible connection protection, i.e. the illusive “Hot Failover” I want to have???

If a WAN fails it will be seamless, but when WANs are healthy you are burning data on both WANs and so reducing your total available bandwidth for user traffic by half. You don’t want this. Although you might enable it for VoIP traffic alone since that is very low bandwidth and it ensures the traffic gets through.

@avic

I then set Forward Error Correction to “Adaptive”, as it seems like a good thing to have, is it? or is not not worth the extra bandwidth it consumes?

Adaptive FEC is the best thing in the whole wide world. It helps with Starlink + Cellular connections. Turn it on.

@avic

I left Traffic Distribution Policy at “Dynamic Weighted Bonding” but set Packet Jitter Buffer to 25ms (since I wanted to keep latency low, but not disable the buffer), was this a reasonable thing to do?

I always leave it at 150ms

@avic

and finally under WAN Connection Priority, I set both “Starlink” and “Verizon” to priority 1 and turned off all the rest (as none are active/configured)

Excellent. That enabled hot failover between the two P1 WANs.

@avic

question: what the additional tunnel (clicking on the “+”) would be used for? clicking on the “+” duplicates the configuration settings of the original/default. yet I can make changes to the config options. what might be a use case for this additional tunnel? i.e. why/when/how would I use another tunnel with a different configuration?

You might have a primary tunnel with Dynamic Weighted bonding and adaptive FEC, then a subtunnel just for VoIP with WAN smoothing enabled. On Outbound policy the subtunnel is there as a WAN option so you can send VoIP traffic via it.

Or you might have a subtunnel that just uses Starlink which you send you smart TVs over so that they don’t consumed cellular bandwidth.

@avic

I then clicked on “route by LAN Client” and added the two Ethernet MAC addresses for my wife’s laptop and her VOIP phone. I assume that these two MAC addresses will be routed via SFC

Yes. This is an automated way to set up an outbound policy for those MAC addresses.

@avic

but what about clients connected to “mySSID4SFC” which is the “reference” SSID? default routing?

Yes default routing. Or whatever you have in our outbound policy list.

@avic

I then found out about Outbound Policy,

Outbound policy gives you full granular policy based routing control. What you did in SFC is like a wizard to achieve that for SFC tunnels and LAN clients that use it.

@avic

my gut feeling says that it might be best to delete the “route by LAN Client” and “route by Wi-Fi SSID” from the SF Connect configuration and just use the Outbound Policy rules

That is what I do. I like the full control I have in outbound polices.

@avic

how would I exclude streaming videos (youtube, twitter/x, prime video, etc) from SpeedFusion?

Take a look at SaaS steering overview videos for guidance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcqh84KP8lk