Peplink with multiple L2 satellite connection

Hi.

We are looking a solution for satellite communication using multiple sat operator.
The satellite modem is trunking modem that works in Layer2. We are trying to combine the bandwidth so we can get full capacity.

The Latency around 600ms - 800ms.


The main problem is our client only ask for L2 connection to their router, with load balance, fail over and jumbo frame mtu.

Can you help with this. If at some point we need to add other router between the customer router, we can provide that.

Thanks for your help.

Hi,
Satellite internet links use a technique called TCP Spoofing to compensate for the extra time required to pass through the space segment. The satellite modems/routers use this TCP optimization to increase the available bandwidth over the high latency link. Because PepVPN / Speedfusion have encrypted headers the optimisation can’t happen - so the available bandwidth for SpeedFusion over satellite is immediately reduced.

I wrote about how PepVPN is affected by this here: How to reduce VPN latency over Satellite links – Martin Langmaid – SDWAN Architect

I have never tried using SpeedFusion to bond multiple satellite links in this way but have used SpeedFusion with satellite and cellular to great effect for resilience. If your focus is on bandwidth aggregation and thats the primary goal, I worry that the underlying satellite modem TCP Optimisation challenges will not produce great results - you’ll get great resilience and be able to failover between satellite links and be able to create a single logical Layer 2 VPN between the customer routers but the total aggregate bandwidth will be much less than expected if the customer is just adding the bandwidth currently available (with TCP OPT) on each link together in their heads and expecting that when bonding. We also cannot support Jumbo Frame MTU.

Thanks,
Martin

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@MartinLangmaid

I’m a VSAT Network Architect you’re correct about the spoofing, but you can turn off that feature called TCP Acceleration.

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Hello @MartinLangmaid ,
Your article is a very interesting read and very timely for a project our team is currently involved with due to roll out in just over three weeks. I think “Asymmetrically Routed VPN” as a name fits OK.

We have a interesting location here in Australia where as a team are together rolling out to seven locations a large scale industrial agriculture network (for use by both operations, local staff and remote staff) using multiple satellite services (they already have fourteen services, 4 at site one, 3 at site two, 2 at sites three & four, 1 at the remaining sites of five, six & seven)), the nearest town to any of these seven sites is about 80 km (about 50 miles), with the furthest being 120 km (about 75 miles), there is a possibility of a low frequency HF radio option to get small amounts of packet radio back to the nearest major centre, would this work with the solution in your article?

There is an existing analogue telephone network via some old carrier radio links, though almost all of the carriers in Australia have abandoned dial-up and ISDN which would have been another option, at these locations there is no ISDN, dial-up could be used if we could still find the right partner and location to dial back to. Did I forget to mention the nearest mobile phone station is not an option without a 100 meter plus high mast ?

We would also like to hear from anyone else open to sharing there wisdom and experience and solution here.
Appreciate your assistance,
Marcus :slight_smile: