Can't get drop in mode to work properly

[psychobunny]

Hi everyone,

I have a Balance 305 and bought a few APs. Having so many issues with them that I want to instead keep our current router and APs and use this in drop in mode instead but I can’t make it work.

We have cable today connected to our existing router. The cable modem is in bridge mode, not a router. If I plug this into WAN1 on the Balance, or I plug our existing router into it with DHCP, it shows my IP is 99.230.114.83, subnet 255.255.248.0, gateway 99.230.112.1 and DNS 64.71.255.204, so basically our external IP info. That’s what our existing router shows for IP info as well when connected. Our router then has gateway 192.168.86.1 for it, and with DHCP all devices on our network get a 192.168.86.X IP address. Our WAN IP is also not static but dynamic, and we just have 1 IP it’s not a /29. If I need to access the cable modem over the network, it’s 192.168.100.1 to get to its interface.

I then have a fibre connection which will be WAN2. I’m really confused how I configure the 305 for drop in mode as the diagram in the help doesn’t really match me. I don’t have a separate firewall from the router, it’s just the cable modem, then our existing router with wifi. My goal is to use the Balance 305 for load balancing and hot fail over, routing VoIP traffic or what not but I want to keep our existing router with wireless as it just works better for wifi vs these AP One’s I got.

I tried setting drop in mode to put the balance with a 192.168.86.X IP, I tried with a 192.168.100.X IP, the internet just does not work and I cannot access the balance when I do it and I have to always factory reset to try again. If I just connect the existing router to the LAN port on the balance that works but then my router shows its external IP as 192.168.2.2 and if I set outbound policy by MAC address etc it doesn’t work if the device is on that wifi network vs the Balance. Thanks!

[Tim_S]

Our WAN IP is also not static but dynamic

Drop-in mode requires at least a single static IP and will not work with a dynamic WAN IP. Thanks

[PeterWest]

As Tim said, DIM requires a static for the DIM device and then an ip for your firewall (so at least two IPs)

Additional WANs are not DIM, they are NAT. for example

ISP 1: Gateway: 99.1.1.1
WAN1 99.1.1.3
FIREWALL: 99.1.1.2

ISP2: Gateway: 100.1.1.1
WAN2: 100.1.1.2-x (all Ips)

then you would NAT Map or port forward to the Firewalls IP so 100.1.1.2 = 99.1.1.2

you would do this for all additional WANs

in this case, the additional WANs being NAT mapped send all traffic on those IPs to the WAN IP of the firewall. The firewall won’t even know therer are multiple IPs coming in to it, if WAN 1 fails, the firewall will act as normal and traffic will flow in and out WAN2.

I think the key issue is why the 305 and APs didn’t work and how we can help make those work better for you.

[psychobunny]

Maybe I misunderstood, I thought drop in mode was the feature used if a customer has a router already that they want to keep. Can someone let me know how I’d set this up in that case then? I’ve mentioned Peplink to many of my customers but I always get the same response “We already have Cisco routers and firewalls and are not changing. If you can load balance or do hot fail over with our existing equipment then we are interested but we are not replacing the Cisco.” So just confused how that works if I want to keep using my existing router and wifi.

Regarding the AP’s not working, I don’t know what the issue is but what I do know is that after 2 days of messing with them I’ve come to the realization that it’s far too much work to make them work compared to what we have today. Main issues I have are:

1. I have 2 AP One Enterprise and 1 AP Mini. The first issue is with the Mini. For 48 hours even though I have it set to follow group policy for everything, it shows “Pending firmware upgrade” for 48 hours. It also shows the group SSIDs assigned to it in inControl, but if you log into the Mini directly into the web interface and go to AP’s it lists the default PEPWAVE-0234 one and not the ones from inControl. Factory reset at least 5 times never works. InControl 2 reports that it’s totally fine, shows online, shows all SSIDs. But if you manually unplug the Enterprise AP’s, your devices all lose Wifi, they don’t switch to the Mini the way they do if you unplug one of the Enterprise ones. Under Clients it always shows No Clients, even if it’s the only AP active.

2. We had Google Wifi previously. Doesn’t matter which AP I’m on in the office, I always get around 420Mbps download from my Galaxy S8. But on the AP Enterprise One’s even if I’m 5 feet away I get maybe 340Mbps max. That’s not terrible in terms of speeds but losing 80Mbps just from changing the AP’s is not worth it to us.

3. The main issue though is that any time I need to reboot the equipment, like making a change or if I need to reboot the switch, it takes a good 10 minutes or so for everything to power back up, but then all my wireless devices never reconnect to it. So my phone will lose wifi, switch to LTE, and just never go back to Wifi. Same with all our laptops etc. Even if you manually select the network it won’t connect. You have to go press and hold the reset button on the APs for 10+ seconds so they reset and reprovision, then all devices will connect to them right away. Reboot the switch and restart the AP’s and back to the same thing, nothing connects until you factory reset them all.

I’m not sure if maybe I shouldn’t be using inControl to provision them or what but we’re just wanting to use the 305 for hot failover now while keeping our existing Google Wifi network as the primary router and wireless since it just works so much better and much easier.

Thanks!

Edit: Being that this is a bit urgent I will open a ticket with technical support regarding using the Balance with an existing router.

[WeiMing]

Maybe I misunderstood, I thought drop in mode was the feature used if a customer has a router already that they want to keep. Can someone let me know how I’d set this up in that case then? I’ve mentioned Peplink to many of my customers but I always get the same response “We already have Cisco routers and firewalls and are not changing. If you can load balance or do hot fail over with our existing equipment then we are interested but we are not replacing the Cisco.” So just confused how that works if I want to keep using my existing router and wifi.

The below article might give you a better picture of the real world deployment.

Deploying the Peplink Balance in Drop-in mode

Drop-in Mode allows Peplink Balance to be deployed in a network without incurring any configuration changes to existing network devices. Example: Pre-Installation In the following network diagram, ISP A provides a 24-bit network 210.10.10.2 / 255.255.255.0, 210.10.10.1 is the default gateway. The Firewall is performing NAT (Network Address Translation) for Local Area Network 192.168.1.0 to access the Internet. Firewall settings: NAT Enabled External Interface IP: 210.10.10.2/24 Default G…

As for your issues on the AP One, it would be better to handle via a support ticket.

Regarding the AP’s not working, I don’t know what the issue is but what I do know is that after 2 days of messing with them I’ve come to the realization that it’s far too much work to make them work compared to what we have today.

[psychobunny]

Thanks, I do have a support ticket open 3 days ago but have not heard back from anyone at Peplink yet so that’s why I thought I’d try posting here since it was a bit urgent. The guide you sent is the one that I was following already. I was able to get assistance by a person familiar with Peplink here in Los Angeles who will be coming out today to check over the issues so we should be good now. Thanks so much.