Peplink Balance 580 - DHCP vs PPoE

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

Hello group,

I am a new user and new to Peplink. I have a question regarding load balancing 4 DSL Lines.

When our peplink was originally set up, the volunteer set 3 of the lines to PPoE and one of the lines as DHCP.

Our one DSL line as of yesterday started giving us issues. The modem was reset, the user name and login information was reset. After this the Peplink would not connect to the DSL line. It said that PPPoE was unavailable or it would say the login information is incorrect. I verified the login information with both my ISP and by logging directly into the modem (and used the same information in the Peplink but with no avail).

I am able to get the line to work by setting it to DHCP. My questions are:

  1. Is it ok to have two DHCP lines? Is there a disadvantage to this? Why would the original set up been 4 PPPoE lines?

  2. Any idea why the Peplink would be saying me login information is incorrect when:
    a. We never changed it and
    b. The same login credentials work to login to the modem (but will not work for the Peplink).

Please advise. I look forward to becoming more knowledgeable so I too can help fellow Peplink users.

Best regards,
Brian

2

ISP supplied DSL hardware is typically configured in router mode out of the box. This makes sense for most users as in router mode devices connected to it get DHCP addresses on a private subnet (ie 192.168.1.x) and share the (normally single available) ISP assigned public IP using NAT. This is what you are seeing now on the reset ISP device, your balance will likely have a private IP on that WAN port now.

If your balance was using PPPoE on the WAN I suspect that the ISP device was reconfigured to be in modem or bridged mode.

I would check the configuration of the other DSL devices on the WANs still working with the PPPoE config on the balance and see if they are setup differently. Normally there is a tick box to change the device mode to bridge/modem and then all DHCP / NAT functions are disabled and the balance performs the authentication using PPPoE to the ISP and gets the subsequent public IP assigned directly to its WAN interface.

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3

Thank you Martin.

That was exactly what the issue was.

I very much appreciate your help.

Brian

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