Failover is fully supported in Peplink Balance besides link aggregation and load balancing. The kinds of WAN connection (DSL, Cable, 3G…etc.) supported are not limited, thus you can simply set a 3G or other kinds of connections as a backup. The only thing you need to do is configuring the WAN connection type and health check on the Web Admin Interface of Balance. Once your preferred connection is disconnected, the backup connection will come up. When the preferred connection come back to live, the Balance will simply shift back to use your preferred connection.
Configuring Connection Type
In order to configure WAN connection type to Always-on or Backup Priority, please follow the set up procedures below:
Go to Network > Interfaces > WAN > (preferred connection)and select Always-on as Connection Type. This WAN will then be your preferred connection.
Illustration 1: Configuring WAN1 Connection Type as preferred connection
Illustration 2: Configuring mobile WAN Connection Type
Go to Network > Interfaces > WAN > (Your backup connection), select Backup Priority on the right of Connection Type. This WAN will then be your backup connection.
Repeat Step 2 for other backup connections. You can set the priority of each backup connection on the right of the option Backup Priority.
Illustration 3: Configuring WAN2 Connection Type as backup connection
Configuring Health Check Settings
Configuring the Connection Type allows all traffic to pass through a pre-defined WAN. Regular health check ensure up-to-date link statuses. In case of your preferred link failure, Peplink Balance automatically re-routes traffic to a healthy link to provide continuous Internet service.
In the Health Check Settings of the same page, select DNS Lookup as Health Check method (for every connection which you would like to use for failover).
Remember to click Save and Apply Changes on the top right-hand corner to activate changes.
@Alan : It seems that an outbound https persistence rule seems to interfere with the described functionality (back and forth switching of failover WANs): it prevents clients to switch back to main WAN from failover lan. So should this rule to be deleted?
ckirch, I have this problem too. A failover switches to WAN2, but when WAN1 comes back online, it doesn’t switch back to WAN1. Did you ever find a resolution?
Do you mean you have 1x Active.WAN and 1x Backup.WAN, and you notice the HTTPS (or similar traffic) session keep switching between the 2 WANs, even though the Active.WAN is backed to operational state?
If this is the case, it sounds like an unexpected behavior. Probably you can submit a ticket for the team to futher investigate.
Can you elaborate more on your setup and Outbound Policy settings? Which algorithm you are using that see that outcome?
Assuming if you are using the Priority algorithm, do you enable the “Terminate Sessions on Connection Recovery” option, which will terminate all the activate sessions on the “backup” WAN when the “active” WAN is recovered?
Thank you! This is what appears in the Outbound Policy (see screenshot). Do I need to add the rule you show above, and remove the HTTPS Persistence rule?
Exactly. I mean that the client sessions remain on the backup connection (WAN2) even though the primary connection (WAN1) was restored when I have persistence rule active. Now I deleted it, so it works fine.
Shall I create a ticket for this?
@ckirch, I couldn’t reproduce the problem here. Fyi, I immediately go to Status > Active Sessions > Search after primary WAN shows connected. I do see some active sessions in WAN2, but they are few seconds ago. They are slowly disappear from the active session. This is expected. Are you seeing the similar things?
The best way to verify this is doing trace route from your laptop to a public IP (e.g. 8.8.8.8). Have you see the trace route is going through WAN2?
@TK_Liew : Thanks for testing.
Should I readd the persistence rule again on my router (as I had deleted it to solve the issue) for testing?
For now I see the same things as you describe.
When I activate persistence rule, the Active Sessions remain on backup much longer.
@ckirch, you may add back the HTTPS Persistence rule.
As mentioned, you have to do a traceroute to confirm where the traffic is routed to. Have you seen the traceroute is going through WAN2 when it is on standby?
Hello @TK_Liew
I restored the persistence rule and now I am facing the issue again. The sessions are not dropped from Backup WAN2 since yesterday (see screenshot (one Hue bridge and one Xbox remain on WAN2 despite WAN1 is online)).
