How do you access the Balance/MAX when using drop-in mode and only 1 Static IP?

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

Hi everyone,

Bit stumped with this would love any feedback on how to properly set this up. Say a customer has cable internet with their WAN 72.142.116.52/30. 72.142.116.53 is the Gateway IP, and 72.142.116.54 is the customer public IP assigned to their router today. Their internal network is 192.168.4.1 assigned to their router, with my laptop connected to the router as 192.168.4.100.

The Balance or MAX device in this example is 192.168.50.1. I ran the setup wizard, and I pick 72.142.116.54 with subnet mask 255.255.255.252. I then put gateway as 72.142.116.53 and then either their actual DNS or Google’s DNS. As soon as I hit apply, I lose connectivity to the Balance since the 192.168.50.1 IP is gone. The existing router has no connectivity and I can’t access the Balance, as if I access 72.142.116.54 it just takes me to the existing router’s login page now. When doing this on a MAX device I was able to get in via inControl2 as long as it had an active SIM in it, but otherwise I’m stuck. So few questions:

  1. Should I be doing something else in the above example, as how do I access the Peplink device? If this was a /29 I’d just assign another IP to the Balance and then I can access it or the router that way. I tried changing the Balance port to 8080 and even to use HTTPS only but it always just takes me to the existing router’s login page.

  2. I’ve never been able to actually get drop in mode to work with 1 public IP. When I check the logs on the router, it won’t connect and has an error about IP address conflict, and says 74.142.116.54 already exists on the network (as it’s assigned to the Balance). I did a test connecting my laptop to the existing cable gateway, and gave my laptop the public IP 74.142.116.54 making my laptop be the existing “router” as a test, but as soon as I add the Peplink device in the line Windows also says IP Address Conflict and says 74.142.116.54 is already in use.

I have the existing router, or my laptop depending on the test plugged into the LAN1 port on the Balance, with WAN1 going to the cable modem gateway.

Thanks!

2

Not sure whether i understand you correctly. You can enable the drop in mode with share IP for your deployment.

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Management IP: Free IP/Subnet that will route to Balance.

Shared IP Address: For your case 72.142.116.54
WAN default Gateway: For your case 72.142.116.53
Router behind Balance IP Address: 72.142.116.54

Detail info please check the forum link below:

1 Like
3

Thanks I’ll try that, I didn’t even know those options existed as every guide I found online was basically the same as this forum post https://forum.peplink.com/t/deploying-the-peplink-balance-in-drop-in-mode/8030 so this is helpful. I’ll check this out soon thanks!