Balance 20 - Doesn't seem to be load balancing.

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

I got my Balance 20 shortly after getting StarLink, as on its own, StarLink is not real terrific for certain applications. We’re currently using CenturyLink Dual-band DSL (WAN 1) and StarLink (WAN 2).

Before the firmware on the Balance 20 was updated to 8.3.0, it seemed to be plug-and-play. I could get up to 21 MB/s down at times. I don’t know if this started when I updated or after (it was some time ago), but the system seems to use WAN 1 as the primary/only uplink, even though they’re both set on Priority 1 on the new system. WAN 1 (the DSL) never exceeds 9MB/s on its own, though it is usually down to about 7-7.5MB/s with an abysmal upload speed. If I remove WAN 1 to disabled, Starlink will take over and I can get up to about 12MB/s down as of today. I’ve tested this with both connections to confirm they are working separately through the router, and they are, but the load balancing doesn’t seem to be working. I’m not sure what to do besides possibly trying to roll back the firmware at this point, as I’ve been trying to resolve this issue for a while now.

Another issue that I’m not sure is relevant, but I found the manual for Balance 20 Firmware 8.3.0 and my Network tab is different than the manual shows. In the manual, it shows quite a list of things there, but most of the ones that are supposed to be there are in the Advanced tab for me, and there’s a couple I’m having a hard time finding. Not sure if something is wrong or if the documentation is wrong.

For relevance, my Network tab left column menu looks like this:
LAN

  • Network settings
  • Port Settings
  • Captive Portal

WAN

and that’s it.

Thank you for your time.

2

By default the outbound policy is set to Auto which uses the link with the lowest latency first. You may want to go under Advanced->Outbound Policy and change the Default rule to custom and chose another algorithm such as: Weighted Balance or Overflow based on what you want to achieve.
Hope this helps.

3

Appreciate the recommendation.

I’ve actually tried this already and it doesn’t seem to work. I’ve tested setting WAN 1 and WAN 2 as the priority with an overflow and I can see the difference in the speeds when I choose the different priority, but it still doesn’t seem to combine them. When I used weighted, it just seems to prioritize WAN 1. Even when WAN 2 is prioritized, sometimes the system just seems to ignore it unless I throw WAN 1 into Priority 2 or Disabled on the dashboard.

Like I mentioned previously, this didn’t used to be an issue. I’m not sure what changed besides the update.