I am moving and my new house will have access to two very high speed connections. 940/940 Fiber, and 1000/20 Cable.
I spent the better part of the morning trying to find the best router to take advantage of the full bandwidth. My minimum throughput would be 1.9 Gbps (or close to it). The Balance 310X looks like it would fill the requirements, but I imagine the extra LTE stuff would be unused. Another requirement would be LACP (802.3ad) – that would be the only way a single client could ever consume the full 2 Gbps.
The Balance 380 looks like it might work, but it seems pretty pricy to get the proper throughput. I also prefer the passively cooled products.
Is there a better option for me? I am basically wanting to download game updates as quickly as possible. I want the lowest possible latency available.
I’d forget about LACP if I were you. If achieving over 1Gb/sec for a single client is paramount then you must have 10Gb networking between the router and the client.
LACP is not going to enable a single client to consume 2Gbs.
LACP would load balance flows across multiple physical links, but the speed of any one flow will be the line rate of “single network ports & interconnects” all the way to the client. You would see 500Mb utilization on each port in the LACP bundle.
LACP is generally only beneficial in a one-to-many scenario.
I have 1Gb cable + 50Mb DSL + 50Mb WISP in my home and use the Balance Two. I’d suggest considering that.
Thank you for the response. Unfortunately, the Balance Two only advertises 1 Gbps throughput. I have been living with the internet being the bottleneck for the past 7 years, so I want to at least have the ability to saturate the links.
I am curious if Peplink is planning any new hardware that will use 2.5 Gbps ports.
I am currently using a Balance One Core (and a Balance 30).
No offense, but what house needs 1gbps let alone 2gbps?
You will be paying big bucks to try to bond 2x 1gbps connections together.
I just do not see the benefit. Especially to just download game updates faster. Many CDNs limit speeds any way. So even if you have a 1gbps the fastest you may ever see is 2-400mbps.
One of my clients has a 300mbps connection with 1-200 end users using the network, and never even uses more than half of the 300mbps (on average) during peak time. Another client with 1,000 end users doesn’t even use as much as you’d think (way less than 1gbps).
Maybe you are right and it is a waste. However, I have been dissecting traffic in order to route across two WISP connections to barely get 50 Mbps.
both connections are under 120 bucks a month. I am currently spending 200 for the two WISP links. The only physical connection to my house is copper phone lines. I have a 3 Mbps DSL connection that only sees UDP game data.
I have watched every member of my family get faster and faster speeds - so, now it is my turn. I am finally able to remove the bottleneck at the gateway, so now I just want a router to take advantage of the faster speeds.
I am always going to need redundant connectivity since I work out of my house remotely.
my budget is somewhere in the 2k to 4k range, but really - the feature set is more important.
I was on the trailing edge of speed and through for so long, I want to be on the leading edge for a while.
why In the world can’t I use the cursor in this text box?
I agree that the Balance One is a major bottleneck in your chain today.
Dont be so quick to dismiss the Balance Two. A Balance Two would handle the max rate of either of your connections, and if you dont care about speedfusion is a very inexpensive option (<$1k). Unless the rest of your networking stack is 10Gb including clients, I dont think you will be able to achieve a single “flow” above 1Gb/s. Balance Two could probly hold you over till 2.5Gb/5Gb/10Gb is more ubiquitous.
Peplink introduced the Max Br1 Pro 5G (i just unboxed 2 of them!) it has a 2.5Gb WAN port, but no 2.5Gb LAN port. Though it has 2x2 wifi6 which theoretically can do 2.4Gb - assuming again that your client is wifi6 AC
The Balance Two might be very tempting, with its price point <$1K. It handles 1 Gbps router throughput and does a fine job of job-balancing and redundancy-handling for the two WANs…
You will have to pay extra for SpeedFuision, but with the slow-down inherent in that technology it may not be worth it (unless the very high level of seamless connectivity provided by a packet-based bonding (as opposed to the session-based load-balancing) is crucial).
The 380 has 1Gbps throughput, the 380X does 3Gbps. Neither hits close to 1 Gbps when using SpeedFusion.
On a side note: If one is old enough one might recall the time when 9.6 Kbps was blindingly fast - who could need more? And today our household has a 1Gbps fiber connection, and we use it (it yields about 900Mbps fo real).
Are you talking about the Peplink 380 as that only has a firewall throughput of 1Gbps so that does not sound like it will fit your desired spec.
The 380x appears to have 3Gbps spec which would fit your need, but Peplink has yet to say anything about IPv6 support and I honestly wouldn’t buy a high priced router, especially for your home, without clarity on this issue as they have refused to answer for 3+ years now.
Yes, I was referring to the 380X. I also was looking at the 310X since it has 2.5 GB throughput.
I have multiple gaming PCs and it is possible that multiple downloads will run concurrently. I completely understand what everyone is saying about not being able to get a single session to reach anything higher than 1 Gbps – especially if LACP isn’t an option. However, since there are multiple machines downloading concurrently – it is possible to reach the max throughput with multiple sessions spread across both WANS.
I also plan to use one WAN for streaming gameplay to the internet, and the other will be for the actual game data.
The Balance Two is definitely the “most bang for the buck” option, it is difficult to argue that. I think that the 310X will be the best option for me. Perhaps I can use the LTE features as a “last resort” in case of physical paths being broken/damaged/offline.
I currently have a balance 30 , with the following connections ,
wan 1 , bonded dsl(from provider, has two dsl lines)
wan 2 -link to hd2 dome cell 1
wan3 (usb) -link to hd2 dome cell 2.
I just ordered a balance 380x and I’m going to setup the following.
WAN 1 , fiber 1g/1g when it’s here (can’t wait)
WAN 2 , star link (when ever it gets here)
Wan 3, ATT direct link
Wan 4 aka usb (hd2 dome and let it auto balance between the two cells)
I ended up selecting the 380x as it would support 3-4 wans for our use.
Here is a comparison link of some other models I considered.
@jmjones Send me a PM of which model you want and we can order this for you quick as a peplink partner.We are happy to help you get this setup.
Thanks for the information. I chose the Balance 310X with the cat 12 modem. It was an open box buy, and it has a minor scratch. I don’t often stare at my router, so the scratch doesn’t bother me. I bought the extended support and still ended up ahead. This router should fulfill my requirements for quite a while ahead.
I was honestly kind of surprised that there wasn’t anything in the lineup based on 2.5
I was going to type 2.5 Lan, but then realized that 2.5 Gbps Ethernet would be more appropriate; but I couldn’t delete the L. It was some kind of UI bug.
I see a bunch of motherboards coming with a 1 Gbps Ethernet as well as 2.5 Gbps Lan. The bug is back - I couldn’t delete the L. The cursor will not go backwards. A forward only cursor. I am lost without the backspace key. I can’t type for shit.
Ok got it, I think 2.5 ethernet is coming to other devices likely as the chipsets are switched out. The first one I noticed is the BR1 PRO 5G has a 2.5 gbps WAN port.
