Is the Peplink Balance also a router?

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

I’m greatly considering a Peplink balance for our organization as we are now in the process of getting a second Metro Ethernet circuit delivered from an alternate provider.

Our first provider comes into a Cisco 2800 router from an Overture fiber to Ethernet hand-off device and has a VLAN ID of 30 for the internet. It the LAN side of the router is presented on a pool of switch ports VLAN’d off where we have a few VPN routers from other services we use. Also the WAN interface of our firewall pair is here.

Our second provider will give us a /30 transport and a /27 public IP range. We don’t have a router for this yet, so if we go with the Peplink, can that BE the router, or do we have to purchase a router (like a Cisco) to sit BETWEEN Peplink WAN2 and the Ethernet handoff of ISP2’s Ciena Metro E Access switch?

Also some of our vendor’s VPN routers are being transitions to “Single Arm” devices, so they just need to access the internet. Some other vendors which require an external static IP are swapping out routers that have both a static IP from ISP1 and a static IP from ISP2. Can the Peplink work with this solution?



Current setup
ISP1 --> 2800 Router ---- > Switch "Public" VLAN-----------------------
                                  |                           |       |
                                  |                           |       |
              VPN routers with Public IP's                   ASA5508 Pair
                                  |__________"DMZ" VLAN ______|       |
                                                                      |
                                                                      |
                                                                      |
                                                               Switch "LAN" VLAN
2

Do
n’t get your diagram quite right. However let me tell you we own several peplinks within my organization and we use the peplink behind Ciscos and Ciena to run our internal networks and the best part, provide VP bonding and redundancy.

The tricky part here is to correctly forwarding from that Cisco to the Pep. On the Ciena ethernet hangoff, just be sure you have all the configs and it should work.

A little more detail on the most complicate setup we have (runs on a peplink 580):

  • Cisco 3825 it’s another /29 => This one bonds 6 T1’s
  • Ciena (something) /27 => 100 M Fiber Ethernet hang-off
  • Att DSL - With 1 static ip
  • Comcast cable (yea fast,cheap but let’s not judge- good speed when works fine) /29
  • 4G USB Router, last resource.

All these are connected directly to the Pep and no other “router” is/was needed. We then user these unit to interconnect to 5 other location on a mesh-start topology between SpeedFusion. Just have to tell you once you setup the VPN’s and the redundancy correctly, forget about those calls complaining about internet issues. Also, you would not believe how easy to setup, manage and maintain this equipment are. Think we all could appreciate some simplicity.

On you particular question, we have internal devices getting 4 different external IP’s and routing their outbound traffic on separates services, or a particular one. Seems that what you want to achieve is doable.

3

I guess my question is the peplink a layer 3 device? Sounds like it is.

My ethernet handoff to Cisco 2800 might be able to go straight into the peplink it sounds. Looks like the Peplink allows specifying a vlan on the wan ports, so our ISP uses 802.1q in q so I need to specify VLAN30 on their handoff, and if Peplink does this and can handle the different IP blocks then I don’t see why I need a router in between them if the Peplink is a Layer 3 device.

4

Hello Kjstech,

I can tell you we have many clients that have MPLS etc. where the ISP has their WAN on a specific VLAN, and yes you can specify the vlan you need on that handoff as seen below.

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