Recommendation on Peplink Router

I’m hoping I can get some recommendations here for a router. I am somewhat experienced with networking (I’m an electrical engineer, but specializing more in power than communications). I’m looking over the available routers and having a hard time choosing what would be right for my situation.

I live in rural Nebraska. I have multiple choices for an internet service provider, but none of them are very reliable or fast. They all consist of either a wireless provider or cellular providers. Promised speeds rarely get over 20 Mbps and are very expensive. In practice, I’m going to be lucky to be above 5 Mbps with possibly less during peak times. My hopes are to purchase the lower cost package from up to 3 providers (at least 2), plus use my Verizon Jetpack as a 4th backup when I’m desperate. I can then hopefully buy a Peplink router and bond the 3 or 4 providers together. My entire house is wired for ethernet and I’ve installed a rack, so anything rackmounted would also be a plus. I plan on buying separate WIFI access points, so no Wifi is necessary in the main router. (My property is about 5 acres and I’d like to have WiFi in multiple buildings, so I’ll need additional access points anyway, plus the rack isn’t in a great place for an access point)

Our use cases are as follows: I need to be able to remote into my work PC in case I need to do emergent work from home. My wife runs a home based business and needs to do her work online. The kids use the internet on a regular basis to do schoolwork. I host an unraid server with Bittorrent Sync to keep my files synced up between my home server and various laptops, phones, tablets etc. The unraid server also is host to my Plex streaming server which my family uses to watch movies and TV shows. We use Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc pretty heavily also when we are able (but the poor service hinders that a lot).

Right now I’m leaning towards a Balance 305, but I’m having a hard time finding where to buy one? Maybe this is overkill for my situation? Any help would be appreciated. I’m less concerned with how much money I spend and more concerned with cobbling together a tolerable internet situation over the long term.

Thanks everybody!

For your case I would recommend the Peplink Balance One Core router along with the 5-WAN license, this will allow you to have up to 5 Ethernet based WAN connections as well as a USB WAN connection with a cellular modem. Thanks.

Is this the correct router to purchase? Do I then purchase the 5 WAN license through your website?

https://www.amazon.com/Peplink-Balance-600Mbps-Dual-WAN-BPL-ONE-CORE/dp/B011VDJWSA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475255669&sr=8-1&keywords=peplink+balance+one

Thank you!

That is correct and you can purchase the add-on license here:
http://store.peplink.com/software-add-ons/others/wan-port-activation-license-for-balance-one-core.html
Thanks.

Thank you so much! I just hit the buy button at Amazon. I’m looking forward to getting this baby hooked up and going!

Good deal! :up: