Difference between WAN unlock for vs Virtual WAN license for Balance line

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

Hello,

I have several Balance Ones with the 5 WAN unlock license BPL-ONE-LC-5WAN. I have five physical internet connections.

I see now that the latest firmware supports Virtual WAN activation with license LIC-3VWAN

What is the difference between the two? Are they interchangeable? Please explain like I am five, as I am not doing anything custom with VLAN/VWANs yet.

I am hesitant to update hardware from a Balance One, as it seems the Balance 20X and Balance Two both only offer 2 WANs. I’d like to be able to use the LAN ports as WANs.

I’ve already looked at the Virtual WAN FAQ (Peplink | Pepwave - Forum) and it’s clear as mud.

Thanks!

1 Like
2

An ethernet wan has a dedicated chip and available bandwidth.
A virtual-wan license would share the LAN switch.
If the wan you are using is under 1GB it probably doesn’t matter which technology you use.
If you want to use 3 , 1GB wans go with a B380x, 310fiber 5g, 310 5g.
If you have 1x1GB wan, 1x50mb wan, 1x100mb wan, then a 20x with vwan licenses will do just fine.

3

How does that work with load balancing? With the Balance One, I can set Outbound policy for the 5 WANs. With them on different VWANS, can you still have the same setup?

4

All of that works the exact same way.

5

So with 5 WANs, I would want to use WAN1 ethernet, WAN2 with USB adapter, then the 3 virtual WAN license to convert the other ethernet ports to WAN?

And if all 5 WANs are the following max speeds, would it work without being limited? As long as they don’t cumulatively add up to over a max of 1GB? How does this effect ethernet performance, if I basically have 1 ethernet port that feeds every other wired connection via another switch?

6

It all boils down to make number of client connections and expected wan thruput.
How many clients , max wan thruput ?

7

About 60 clients on a normal day. Max WAN speed of all combined is about 550MB.

8

That should be fine