Hello Peplink community!
I am the race director and Chief Technical Officer (I say that sarcastically…) of the SoCal Motor Bicyce Racing Association.
We hold motorized bicycle race events at Go-Kart tracks across a variety of locations in the ‘greater Southern Calinfornia area’.
As somewhat of a surprise to me, a Live Stream that was started as a curiosity by one of our attendees has gained so much popularity that we are now attempting to deploy some kind of “solution” to improve our Live Stream quality for the many viewers that demand a “good stream” 
Lets start with the basics;
We are currently racing at 3 different race tracks, but we are constantly looking to find new racing venues for our racers to experience.
The majority of race tracks in souther california are ‘out in the desert’ and, unsurprisingly, devoid of the kind of cellular reception and data rates that most people have become used too.
At many of our tracks, an average ‘smartphone’ struggles to get 1-2 bars of service, sometimes only one provider has coverage, and anyone with a different provider is “out of luck” for their devices.
In addition to the Live Stream, there is an RFID timing system that I have deployed which can relay up-to-the second timing data for the riders out on course.
This data is relayed over an internet connection to a “Track Day App” relay server, which in turn feeds the lap timing data to the Track Day App that attendees can download and use.
-This means the attendees need reliable internet access to receive timely updates from the Track Day App. Not a lot of throughput, but consistent.
For this reason, we have also deployed a physical local network at the track, with WiFi access points for the attendees to connect to and receive internet access for APP functionality.
OKAY;
As of right now, Internet is provided to the physical local network by means of a Teltonika RUT240 CAT4 cellular router;
-it is set in “passthrough” mode, disabling NAT/ routing functionality, “just” passing its assigned WAN IP to the one LAN port it has.
-this is passed to the WAN port of an -aging- OpenWRT flashed consumer router (ASUS rt-n66u)
-Ruckus R600 AP’s running Unleashed firmware are used to distribute the WiFi network.
-it is (shockingly) not stable enough or enough throughput for the quality of Live Stream we would like to provide to our viewers
My plan is to implement drum roll Multi-WAN bonding! (celebration noises)
After -MUCH- research I have decided I want to use the SpeedFusion Connect Protect service as my bonding solution.
I (think) I have decided I want to start my Multi-WAN journey with a Balance20x.
I have already received my first batch of 10x ‘Teal’ eUICC physical 2FF eSIM cards, and have verified they work in my Teltonika RUT240.
These are going to allow me to access AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile’s “native core” Tier 1 transport network at the shockingly low price of $0.008/Mb ($8/Gb)
-these allow me to have ONE eSIM card installed in a device with the ability to provision it OTA (myself using a cloud dashboard) from one carrier network to the other at a whim -it takes about 10-15 minutes to switch carrier.
-No maximum data allowance per month, but if you use a terabyte, your paying $8k for it.
-If we can mange to make 4k@60fps streaming happen, we are looking at ~100Gb of data used per event, or ~$800 in Tier 1 data cost per event, not bad IMHO.
Seriously, check out Teal guys, they are doing something pretty unique, at least in the United States.
So, the SIM’s and carriers/ data plan I will be using are “figure out”.
Next comes the cellular router-modems I will be “bonding” together.
I really want to stick with Ethernet connections.
I know the Balance20x has the expansion module, but I dont know what the bus limitations are.
-I hear the HW3 version is out in the wild now, and it is supposed to support the new SFP ExpansionModule Mini…
-But, I still have to run coax lines from the Balance20x unit to the antennas if I go that route.
-There are the MAX Adapters, but I am not sure I want to have a one-off connection that uses the one USB port, and then different solutions for the other links.
So, my plan is to get a Balance20x HW3 Cat4 version and not even use its internal cell modem (again, because of the requirement to run coax leads from the balance20x to the antenna’s; the Balance20x is going to be in the “timing tent”, and there is going to be ‘some distance’ between the tent and the antenna array)
-My plan is to purchase the VirtualWAN liscese’s to enable enough WAN connections for the bonding I plan to achieve.
-Initially, I want to be able to slowly scale up to 4x bonded cellular connections.
-As I potentially grow this “solution” I plan on potentially upgrading to a MAX HD2/4 or an MDX for 8-16 bonded links.
I want each cellular modem-router-antenna combo to be exactly the same, and to be able to add addition units as-needed.
In a perfect world, this cellular modem-router would live inside the antennas radome, and would be PoE powered.
-such that each bonded WAN link would be ‘fed’ by a single discrete box with a single ethernet cable coming out of it.
-these “modem-router-antenna” boxes would all terminate at a simple PoE switch with enough ports to accomdate the number of bonded links.
-this PoE switch would assign VLAN ID’s to each “modem-router-antenna” box, and the Peplink router would map these VLAN ID’s to the required number of WAN interfaces.
Okay then! -thats “THE PLAN”
-Does anyone see any glaring issues with my plan?
-Does anyone have any recommendation for a …price sensative… option for this “modem-router-antenna” box I have envisioned?
(right now I am leaning HEAVILY towards Teltonika RUT360 CAT6 modem-routers, stuffed inside Poynting EPONT 2 MIMO antenna radomes)
-Does anyone have antenna recommendations for long distance, non line-of-sight cellular LTE links
-Does anyone with experience bonding multiple ceullar links have any recommendations for what can quickly become a VERY LARGE antenna array
(image 8x bonded links using 4x4 mimo… thats 32 antenna elements… 
)
-Does anyone see anything I am not thinking of?
Thanks Peplink Community!
-Sean Davis