Peplink Balance to replace 2 Netgear Nighthawks HELP

I currently have 2 modems from Charter Spectrum that provide me with 100/5. I am hoping to use load balancing for these 2 connections. I also have a 24 port unmanaged switch and a Netgear Nighthawk R8500. I am guessing to use the router I would need to make it strictly and access point. Should I connect the Netgear Nighthawk to the Peplink Balance One directly or to the unmanaged switch. I also have Nest cameras and Ring cameras and not sure if they have require a static IP address.

I plan on using Shareband to bond these 2 lines for higher upload speed in the near future and probably get 2 more modems to either load balance or also bond those.

Does anyone here also have any issues with Plex? How would I make my computer only pickup one IP address of the higher upload dual connection and not load when I have a need to host connect?

Does anyone know the wifi specs, actually link rate of the Balance One? I could not find this information anywhere. My R8500 is 1000 Mbps for 2.4 GH and 2,150 for each 5.0 GH band.

HI,
A Balance One connected to the two modems will load balance traffic fine. Yes use the Netgear R8500 as an AP, You don’t say what speed your unmanaged switch is so I would plug the R8500 directly into the balance LAN ports.

Haven’t used Shareband in over a decade, but last time i did it was an all or nothing service - ie you would be bonding your download and upload for every lan client. Depending on why you want to bond your upload bandwidth (I suspect for your cctv video?), you might be better off using a FusionHub hosted in the cloud to roll your own bonding service - that way you could configure bonding to only be used by those devices that need it. I remember shareband being very expensive when you start hammering bandwidth.

Thank you for your response. My current setup is this. Peplink Balance One connected to a 48 port Unify Managed POE switch. I have 4 Ubiquity Access Points, 2 are the AC version and 2 are the HD version. My modems consist of 2 300/20 Mbps modems with Charter Spectrum. I have an R7000 w/ Tomato currently not in use. I plan on purchasing the R9000 AD7200 Netgear Nighthawk and installing DD-WRT so I can use a VPN such as Express or PIA.

First question. If I wanted to encrypt ALL traffic under the VPN would I plug in the Netgear AD7200 into the LAN port of the Peplink Balance One? Would I need to change settings to make the Peplink setup in drop mode? Or would I plug the AD7200 into the LAN port of my managed switch? Is there a pro or con to either method?

I don’t know how the configuration needs to be on the VPN router. Not sure if the VPN can work when the router is setup as an access point or if I have to cascade the router so that IP addresses are assigned. I am noob when it comes to networking and computers.

Second question is in regards to Bandwidth bonding. I want to obtain a super fast connection such as 600/40 since I have 2 300/20 modems. Previously both modems were set to 100/5 and on speed test i usually received 230/10. But now when I run speed test i usually never receive anything above 300 Mbps. However, the upload is usually hitting 40’s? Is there a way that I can obtain a license and would this create a true bandwidth bonding where I would achieve the crazy speeds of 600 Mbps download which is maximum throughout? I hate to plunk down $900 based on the misunderstanding that bonding only works with the VPN tunnel and when you have another Peplink router.

Thank you in advance for your insight, suggestions and patience.