So very close to purchasing... help?

I’m currently using a certain multi-wan router which, for the purposes of discussion, will identify as $Cheap_Router.

For $50, it was a great deal.

For the 10+ hours I’ve spent trying to make it work… it’s been a disaster.

I’m on the fence for buying a Peplink One - can you push me over into hitting the “Buy now” button?

My Issues:

  • I have 2 WAN cable modems, and although they are different brands, both have their Admin interface at 192.168.1.0. My current $Cheap_Router seems to fail when I try to access either one to use their admin pages. My current workaround is to walk to the modem, unplug it, and plug in directly with a laptop set to 192.168.1.x. Can I access modem 1’s admin page vs. modem 2’s admin page using a peplink?
  • We run an apple messages server (Jabberd /xmpp/proxy65) and although the chat works, file transfers fail. I’m about 90% on the belief that my $Cheap_Router is to blame, but it could simply be a bug in 10.9 server. Anyone out there have a working apple OS X server messages?
  • I’m using “PeakHour” as a SNMP bandwidth monitor. Does this app work with the Peplink One?
  • Our wifi is an airport extreme (2012 vintage, the one that has B G N, but not new newest AC model). How does the Balance One compare for wifi performance on the 5GHz side?

Thanks in advance

The Balance is compatible with your scenario, but I would recommend to run the cable modems in bridge mode and not NAT mode. No need to do a double NAT, and you can always reach the web admin interface of the cable modems at 192.168.1.100. To reach each modem individually you just need to create an outbound enforced rule and then toggle it as needed. Also, if you don’t run the cable modems in bridge mode then you will need to change the Balance interface 10 something other than 192.168.1.x.

I have no idea about the Apple message server, but I can’t think of a reason it wouldn’t work.

We support both SNMP and UPnP so there should be no reason that app wouldn’t work. The Balance itself also has very robust reporting of bandwidth.

Wi-Fi performance should be very comparable.

I just installed a Balance One for a client.
Very very impressed with the ease of setup and performance.
Want one for myself!

Both WANs would be in bridge mode. Thanks for the tip about using the enforced rule : probably wouldn’t need it except for the rare times if either modem was malfunctioning.

What we are seeing is that regular jabber/xmpp traffic SSL over 5223 works just fine. However, the Apple Messages.app file transfer is flakey. As far as we can tell, the file transfer happens like this:

  • Client A makes a connection to snatmap.apple.com and receives a reply “this is your WAN ip address”
  • Client A sends a text message to Client B saying “Hey, I have a file for you, come grab it on IP:Port”
  • Client A then tries to use UPnP to open the port for Client B to connect.

When this fails (which is most or all of the time) we see that the IP address that Client A has used is a 172.x address which is a private LAN routable address. The bizarre thing is that we have no 172.x networks anywhere in our setup. Our theory is that either the $Cheap_Router is doing something funky, or possibly it’s a DNS issue with our ISP (Time Warner)

Great.

Sounds good.

Thanks for all the help - I’m happy to note that I just ordered my Peplink balance one.

Enjoy your new Balance One router :up: