Balance 20 - 8.1.0 - unstable

I had similar woes with my Balance 30, so I can only imagine what it is like with the Balance 20. One thing that did help tremendously for me was to put a gigabit switch in front of the Balance. If you can keep LAN->LAN transfers outside of the router – it helps.

It sounds like you have this thing doing more than just DHCP. Inferring from your post, it looks like you are using the firewall to limit access to the internet for some devices, you are using the internal DNS server for custom DNS entries, and it is all on one untagged Lan. You never mentioned how many WAN links you are using - but, I would assume that it is more than one.

Some of those IoT devices (assumption) can be very chatty with multicast “discovery” traffic. Maintaining large multicast groups can also be taxing on routers.

Another option (one I used until I replaced my Balance 30) was to put a cheaper BestBuy router in between the Peplink and the LAN devices. Basically, you use the Balance to manage the WAN links and routing, and you let the “other” router manage the LAN devices. You have to deal with double NAT potentially, and another potential point of failure – but, it saves a few dollars. If you find a router with IP-Passthrough, you can use all the load balancing algorithms, if not – you are kind of stuck with destination based routing since the Balance will only ever see the IP of the intermediate router.

Free advice – skip on the TP-Link multi Wan router – it is a hunk of hot garbage. I had one for a year and was waiting for some firmware to make it useful enough to actually use. They still have not released firmware for it. None of the UPnP stuff works at all and it requires a reboot to clear any forwarders that are there. In fact, rebooting is the ONLY way to get that hunk of garbage to do anything. I still have it in a box – I would gladly give it to you – but, I am pretty sure you would give it back.

For what it is worth, The Balance One Core is a great unit. No issues from me for over 2 years and I have a similar number of devices and use a very similar feature set as you. Expensive, yes; but it does do the job very well and uses a UI/rationale that you are already familiar with. There is value in just getting it going and letting it do what it does.

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This is all really great advice - thanks a lot for the post.

I have had a similar issue (unstable performance, web interface unresponsive) when attempting to upgrade to 8.1.0 with my Balance 20 HWR 1. Have tired twice since the release of 8.1.0 but always have to revert back to the previous firmware (8.0.1 build 3658 in my case) due to it being unstable. I have two users in my home with about 20 IoT and IT devices on a single 75/25mb connection. I would venture to suggest there is more to the issue than the 60 users discussed above.

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Same problem with balance 20 upgrading from 8.0.2 to 8.1.0:
web interface unresponsive, dhcp unresponsive and pepvn broken with pepvn enabled, ok when pepvn are disabled.
return to 8.0.2 and all is well

Haven’t seen this referenced yet but the upgrade of my balance 20 to 8.1.0 last week resulted in a constant “connecting” death spiral on WAN 1 interface, never actually connects. I swapped the feeds to confirm it was not the router or cabling. WAN 2 connected with no issues regardless of the source. A reboot to 8.0.2 “fixed” the problem. Guess I’ll wait for the next update.

I have been experiencing similar issues with a couple of Balance 20 routers (HWR 6) since upgrading to 8.1.x. The one I use at home frequently shows 100% CPU utilization and admin interface becomes unavailable whenever I try to log in to the management interface through IC2. It also seems to happen randomly for no apparent reason. Only doing basic routing, DHCP, and DNS with ~10 devices. Hoping the Peplink team can figure out where they went wrong with this one.

Omar

For those having issue after upgrade using firmware 8.1.0 , possible please open a ticket to allow Support team to further check on the issue.

https://ticket.peplink.com/ticket/new/public

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We have reviewed few reported cases and found that there is a potential bug that affects the system stability. I suggest upgrading to the firmware below which fixed the bug.

https://download.peplink.com/firmware/plb30/fw-b20_30-8.1.0s083-build4956.bin

For those still having stability issue with this firmware, please help to open ticket for us to investigate. We may need to check the device usage and other factors.

Thank you.

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Upgraded my B20 at home and will keep an eye on it. Thanks.

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I’ve been keeping an eye on my BPL 20 for the past few days and it seems to be way better now. Haven’t had any lock-ups or crashes since upgrading to build 4956.

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@OmarVR, this is a great news for us. Thanks for your feedback! :blush:

@TK_Liew
Same issue seems to be present in 8.1.1b01 build 4963.

@OmarVR

Replied here : Firmware 8.1.1 Beta 1 - #19 by sitloongs

This build has worked for me as well

This issue with Balance 20s is still present on 8.1.1 Beta 2. So far seems even worse.

@OmarVR

Do you have ticket opened ? We may need to investigate further from your device seen the fix is not helping you.

No, I haven’t opened a ticket. But the changes introduced in 8.1.0s083-build4956 did indeed fixed the issue. After upgrading to 8.1.1 b2 the issue reappeared.

Whenever I try to do a “Remote Web Admin” from IC2, my Balance 20 CPU utilization goes to 100% and stays like that for a while. Web admin interface never shows up and end up getting the “Unable to connect to device” error. Also unable to access the web console locally. Just reproduced this again 15 minutes ago.

@sitloongs @TK_Liew

Went back to 8.1.0s083 and everything seem to be fine again.

@OmarVR, we have a few cases that are running fine with 8.1.1b02. We would like to take a look to your device. Please help to open ticket. Please attention the ticket to me.

Thanks.

@TK_Liew

Ticket opened. #20110740