Hi,
I have 4 sites where 2 of them have a WAN access point. One of those sites is connected to the 3 other ones via Wireless Wire devices. After discussions during the weekend, one of my contacts has recommended strongly Peplink, given that they have used Peplink in the past. My requirements are:
- Advertise 3 APs in each of the sites.
- 2 of the APs correspond to each one of the WANs across the sites
- The 3rd AP is a failover AP: It provides access to the WAN-A or WAN-B giving priority to WAN-A and failing over to WAN-B, if WAN-A is not accessible. The criteria for which WAN is primary to a site and which is backup can be different in each site
The questions are: Can Peplink devices implement this? Which devices can do it. Can the Peplink devices used in the implementation be accessed remotely (for each site) ?
Please NOTE: The WANs access points are NOT in the same site.
Thanks
What if I were to route the WAN location at one of the sites so that one router would have the 2 WAN connections? That would simplify things, right?
With that in mind, I could have a B One in the place where the 2 WANs are and AP One AX Lites in the other 3 sites, right?
By the way, can Peplink be used with Tailscale to access routers remotely? or is InControl2 the only way that I could access the router remotely?
This might need a network + location diagram to give you the detail that you will want when it comes to exact configuration, but yes this will be possible.
However the question becomes why use different AP SSIDs to manage which WANs a connected client gets access to?
If its to classify the user type to then allocate them access to different types of WAN that get progressively more expensive that make sense, On yachts we’ll often see an owner SSID that gets every connection available (even expensive geosat / Bonded Starlink) and a crew network that only gets the cheapest internet access (shore wired data connection or unlimited SIMS) when it is available.
If it’s because the WANs get progressively worse bandwidth wise then that too make sense I suppose as you can prioritise clients connected to one SSID over another.
A safe assumption, although choice of Peplink device should be based on number of users / sessions, total available bandwidth / throughput and physical conditions (does it need to be rugged).
Not directly, you can’t install tailscale on the peplink directly. InControl gives very easy remote access of the routers and APs themselves, InTouch lets you use InControl as a secure bridge to LAN side devices for OOB management too.
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As far as why the different SSIDs, it’s just one of the requirements given to me. The logic is to connect to a specific WAN for the first 2 SSIDs (which would allow some devices that they want to connect to monitor the WANs at each site, among the reasons why). Some IoT devices would be connected permanently to the failover SSID, but I don’t anticipate more than 20 or so in total between all the sites, and they don’t require high bandwidth.
The drawback that I see for routing the WAN connection from one of the sites to the “central” router is that if there’s issues between that site and the router, the site loses it’s local connectivity.
While not a visual representation of the network requirements, these are the specs:
Site A, Site B, Site C and Site D
Site A has WAN1
Site B has WAN2
Site A and B connect via wireless Ethernet ptp
Site B and C connect via wireless Ethernet ptp
Site B and D connect via wireless Ethernet ptp
All 4 sites should present:
SSID1 - providing access to WAN1 - no failover
SSID2 - providing access to WAN2 - no failover
SSID3 - providing access to WAN1, but failing over to WAN2, if needed
Thanks!