I’ve been using a Balance 30 LTE (BPL-031-LTE-US-T) and Balance One (BPL-ONE) for the last 5 years. Except for the occasional issue, they’re performed flawlessly.
Within the last several months, the Balance One has been hard locking up, requiring a reboot. Other times, the wireless goes out, but wired connectivity seems to continue. Rebooting resolves the issue temporarily.
I updated both to the newest firmware a couple of weeks ago, but it hasn’t seemed to fix the issue with the Balance One. I had been buying the extended warranty, but chose not to renew last December. Naturally, I’m having problems with it now. It’s being used for home use in an apartment currently.
I am not sure if maybe it’s unable to keep up with the demand being placed on it. I have 6 Nest cameras streaming high quality video while I’m away. That is usually when I get notified by Nest that all of my cameras have gone offline. The Balance is using a wired and 4G connection to balance network load from dozens of wired and wireless clients.
I was thinking about renewing the warranty to try to get support for it, but the Balance One is 5 years old. Is there a newer model or another router I should consider instead?
Is the wifi enabled on it? There was a batch of Balance Ones that would crap out when WIFI was turned on and the Balance One was installed in a metal closet / rack. Turned wifi off and its been stable for months now.
As Martin said, there have been other discussions here about Balance One overheating when the wfi is used. I’ve had the problem with some but not all of mine. Cured instantly by turning off the internal wifi and adding an external AP such as the AP One Mini which can be controlled from within the Balance One.
Do you have some equipment available such that you can run for a while with the internal AP turned off? Or can you position a fan blowing on the Balance One? It wouldn’t take much air flow to make the difference, and prove whether or not thats actually your problem.
You might try lowering the wifi transmitter power level as a test. I haven’t heard of that making a difference but worth a try. AP > Settings > Default (or other if you renamed it) > Output Power.
I have an AC One Mini sitting around not being used. I had tried it as an extender a few years ago but any devices connecting to it had major slowdowns, so I had shelved it. I’ll pull it back out and give it a try in place of the Balance One. Do you think it can handle the same load as the Balance One? I suppose one other option is to try to move 5Ghz to the Mini, if it supports it, and change the Balance One to 2.Ghz only.
For what it’s worth, the Balance hardware hasn’t moved in two years.
Hello @Xerxes,
I have been considering writing this up for a while as we would like to hear from the Peplink Community, you got in first.
We have a case open with Peplink where were are investigating issues with the built-in Wi-Fi on the Peplink Balance models (specifically the Balance One & Balance 30 Pro) [Peplink #9100793].
Our current solution has been similar to @Don_Ferrario; here is what we are doing.
Firstly we removed all SSIDs from the 2.4Ghz, running the SSIDs on only the 5Ghz spectrum.
Secondly, if that still does not stabilise the situation or some devices need 2.4Ghz, we turn off the inbuilt Wi-Fi on the balance routers and install a suitable external WAP such as the Pepwave AP One ENT or Pepwave AP One RUG.
The other issues we are seeing is that once these models of Balance routers start having problems, it appears that our most cost-effective solution is to replace them ASAP. This replacement is based on lost time and productivity and costs of shipping faulty units back for repair) or upgrade the clients to a combination like a new router (such as a Balance 380) with separate WAPs (such as the AP One Rug) rather than pursuing the warranty. Switching firmware (including rolling back to older versions) has not been effective in stabilising a declining unit and we usually keep the client on the latest release due to other benefits.
Thank you. I’ve moved the 5GHz SSID to the AC Mini. That includes the six Nest cameras streaming high quality video, the Amazon Echo devices, and my phone.
For the few devices still requiring 2.4Ghz (about 8), I’ve left that SSID on the Balance One. So far, after 24 hours, the network has been stable and the cameras have not gone offline.
Unfortunately, it seems there is no way to see CPU load info and the support.cgi page doesn’t exist on the AC Mini, so I am unclear just how hard I am taxing the AC Mini with 5GHz devices.
I’ll be sure to post back with any updates. I’ve turned off the scheduled daily reboot on the Balance One.
Xerxes, you will gain nothing by splitting the 2.4g and 5g between the two devices. I would move both the 2.4g and 5g to the AP One Mini, and then completely turn off the internal access point (on the router home screen).
