I work from home and I need a constant and reliable connection.
Some background: I currently have a fiber connection that manages 640mbit down and 260 up. However, each time the distribution panel is touched, I am offline. Tech support … need to phone in, and the ISP sends someone in about 3-7 working days to fix it. This happens about 4-6 times a year. Another ISP pulled its fiber, my neighbor has it, it manages about 300-700 download and around 600-700mbit upload, but since it’s a recent service in the area I have no idea about reliability. I leave in EU, the services are costing about 7-8 Euro each, so pretty cheap, even here, so why not … beside the extra upload would speed up large dataset transfers. As a 3rd option I have is LTE, from provider #1 (it was mandatory to have two services, so I have the fiber and the mobile SIM as a package), which manages 30-40mbit down and about the same upload.
My question is, which of the balancers would be the right choice to have both fiber connections with the LTE as a backup connection. As I am not familiar with peplink products, the router throughput advertised (less then 1Gbit), with firewall and QoS disabled can any balancers max out the combined 1Gbit down/upload? (a simple NAT is sufficient for me and I don’t care about assigning the exterior IPs into the network - it is ok that the router has it).
2 WAN ports, each handling a fiber-enabled connection.
1 LTE connection as backup in case the two wired WANs fail.
Musings:
There seem to be two viable (and not-too-expensive) options.
Balance 20x + a USB ethernet dongle
It provides the LTE modem and one wired WAN
Its throughput is 900Mbps (close to 1Gbps)
You get the second wired WAN connection by adding a USB-Ethernet dongle. Question-mark: How fast the USB-ethernet connection can go.
I have no real experience with that, beyond occasionally employing a USB-Ethernet dongle on a Balance 380 HW6. That connection (across a 1Gbps fiber) achieved only 335Mbps, where the Ethernet WANs to the same fiber achieved 900+ Mbps.
Balance Two + a USB modem dongle
It provides two full-speed wired WAN ports
Its throughput is 1Gbps
You get the LTE fallback using the USB-connected modem
FWIW: The set-up for a home office for one of our people predates the Two and the 20x, and required more than two SpeedFusion connections (it serves as a hub for remote locations of various kinds). She ended up with a Balance 380 (for the two separate ISP WANs - we’re quite risk adverse ) and a MAX BR1 Mini LTE-A connected to the third WAN (could equally well have been connected by means of the USB-Ethernet port) as the cellular fallback.
If we were to do it again today I’d expect her to select the Balance Two (as per the above) with a SpeedFusion upgrade license to handle more than 2 peers, and the USB-ethernet dongle connecting to the BR1 (or a USB-modem dongle, if she did not already have a BR1 at hand).
Thank you.
Unfortunately there is no local peplink partner, however, amazon UK sells the 20/20x/30 LTE/30pro/two products.
Balance 30 LTE also caught my eyes, hence the question: if stateful firewall disabled (or even QoS), can it achieve higher speeds or this is not an option (I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere)? If yes, then that would be my primary choice, if not, then the “two” would be the alternative option.
The balance 30 LTE is limited to 200Mbps. I am not aware of means to exceed that (but I am definitely not an authority w.r.t. that trick, if there is one)
) and a MAX BR1 Mini LTE-A connected to the third WAN (could equally well have been connected by means of the USB-Ethernet port) as the cellular fallback.