MAX Transit vs MAX Transit Duo simultaneous wan links

I am curious why the MAX Transit Duo supports simultaneous wan links (and by extension, outbound policy) while the non-Duo version does not. These appear to be identical hardware in all other respects.

thanks,
Jim

It is because the DUO has two embedded modems making two interfaces while the Transit only has a single embedded modem.

I guess the issue I have with that answer is that you have 2 nearly identical products, one with 3 WAN interfaces, and one with 4 WAN interfaces, but only the more expensive 4 interface model allows simultaneous WAN.

I count WiFi as WAN and the gigabit ethernet WAN as 2 of the WAN interfaces in the above numbers.

Thanks Tim,
jim

The Transit does not support Outbound Policy routing but the Transit DUO does. The next model that supports it would be the HD2 Mini or the HD2 LTE, and these are more expensive then the DUO. Thanks.

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Tim,

Thank you for your answers. They aren’t what I want to hear, but I respect that this is a business decision instead of a technical decision.

I really love the peplink hardware. I must, since I have 6 devices now, and I just keep buying more. :smiley:

There was a thread about using BR1 simultaneous cell and wifi wan, and one of the responses implied that the transit might be able to do this. I suspect the responder was referring to the Duo model, but that wasn’t explicitly stated: https://forum.peplink.com/threads/6511-BR1-Simultaneous-Cell-and-WiFi-WAN?p=26126&viewfull=1#post26126. This gave me some small hope that the non-Duo model might allow this to work. The conversation quickly veered in another direction, so there wasn’t a clear answer there.

Some background:

I first started using peplink a bit over a year ago. I recommended the surf soho to my parents based on having read all the product specs on the site, using the demo web admin, and reading the manual from the site. I bought my own surf soho about the same time. What I didn’t realize until I had mine and went to set up the second WAN link was that these devices were not able to do simultaneous WAN. I also was disappointed that the user groups feature was missing. Neither of these things was very clear in the spec pages and manuals at the time, although it has gotten better since.

I later upgraded to the balance 20. With the balance 20, I could have a AT&T sim card in a usb modem using from the same data bucket as my phone plan for low latency/high priority traffic (SSH primarily, for work), and have the lousy excuse for DSL that verizon provides as the low priority/bulk/unlimited channel. In retrospect, I should have gotten the Balance 30 LTE instead, but at the time my budget was a lot tighter.

Much later, I bought a Max BR1 for my car, and put a t-mobile SIM in it, with 1GB high speed data each month, and unlimited dribbles thereafter, it works great for in-car usage.

Recently, I found another cell provider with much better data rates. I ordered the service, and received my SIM and gateway device, but quickly discovered that their provided gateway device just didn’t work in my area. I took the BR1 from the car, and got the SIM working in it at good data rates, and linked that via ethernet to the WAN2 port on the Balance 20. This cell provider doesn’t provide a public IP, so this meant I was in a triple nat scenario, which I didn’t like. I also want to have my home router do it all. This is when I ordered the Transit Duo.

I have to say, the Transit Duo is my favorite piece of peplink gear yet. It is a compact package filled with tons of awesome features, and generates less heat than the BR1. It has Gigabit ports, and 802.11ac. The serial link is really cool, I cannot wait to try to play with that.

In the mean time, I recommended this new cell provider plan to my parents, and they ordered it. They now have my BR1 as their main router, with their old DSL line configured in failover mode. There hasn’t been one outage yet, the data rates stay consistent, and the BR1 just keeps going and going and going.

This left me with no device in the car, and I have to confess that I wanted a new toy, so I bought the Transit. The previously linked forum message is the only hint I had that I might be able to do multi-wan with it, but I didn’t let that affect my decision. I can make things work without the simultaneous multi-wan, it just would have made things easier if it did work. I certainly could not justify the cost differential for the Duo just for that feature, and I didn’t need a 2nd cellular modem in the vehicle.

I’m doing some custom telemetry stuff with the car that I don’t want to go into detail about. When the car is at home, it can access the home wifi, and when at work there is a public access wifi available. I’ll simply make the wifi wan the higher priority connection, with fallback to cellular, and it’ll all work out.

I think peplink should consider adding the simultaneous WAN feature (even if it’s an extra-cost add-on feature) for the Transit. The closest thing to the Transit in the Balance line is the Balance 30, and the Transit already costs more than the Balance 30.

–
jim

Hi Jim,

Thank you for the invaluable feedback for the forum link Peplink | Pepwave - Forum . Basically the recommendation is for Max Transit Duo. I will add a note for the previous forum link explaining the simultaneous wan links feature between Transit MAX-TST vs MAX-TST-DUO, so that everyone clear about this.

Regarding to the above request, i will feedback to our business team.

Thank You