Technical notes about advanced SpeedFusion features in firmware 6.2.0

Product Discussion Beta Releases
1

As our 6.2.0 firmware for Balance / MAX / Surf is now going to open-beta-2. This is a good chance to share more information with you of some new advanced SpeedFusion features - “Asymmetric Connection”, “Connection Mapping”, “Cut-off Latency” and “Packet lost pull-back”.

NOTE These advanced features only apply to devices running PepVPN with SpeedFusion™ Bonding Technology.

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From the screenshot above, this is where you create or modify a PepVPN profile, to enable these advanced SpeedFusion features, just click on the (?) help icon located on top right of the WAN Connection Priority table, and you will see the hidden links in the help dialog.

“Asymmetric Connection” - named as “Direction”, you can control a specific WAN to be upload or download only, this is especially useful for WAN like ADSL which is not performing well on upload, then we can configure it to focus on download and let the other WANs to do the upload job.

“Connection Mapping” - named as “Connect to Remote”, you can force a specific WAN connecting to one of the remote WAN only, ignoring all the other remote WANs but only connect to the one you selected. This will be useful when the point-to-point performance of the local WAN are not doing well to all of the remote WANs, but it can do a good job when connecting to a specific remote WAN (you can find this out by using PepVPN Analyzer, and yes, sometimes Inter-ISP traffic are tricky and this will help a lot).

“Cut-off Latency” - named as “Cut-off latency (ms)”, this is simple but extremely useful, especially for cellular connections. You can set a value, in milliseconds, say, 1000, then if the PepVPN tunnels created using this WAN has a latency exceed the configured value, tunnels through this WAN will be suspended temporarily, and will continue to work when the latency drop below the value you set.

Cut-off latency will temporarily suspend a tunnel when it sees a latency value larger than the user defined threshold, this will be done immediately when the latency data is updated and the fastest response time is the RTT (round-trip time). When a tunnel is temporarily suspended, health check packets are still there and latency value will be redetermined every time when a health check packet is replied from the remote side, once the latency is dropped below the defined threshold, the tunnel will become active again and start to transmit user data.

“Packet lost pull-back” - named as “Packet lost pull-back time (ms)”, this need to be cautious when configuring the value, you can set it in milliseconds, say 1000. Then if the tunnel using this WAN has packet loss, the tunnel will be suspended for 1000ms, if you set 2000, it will be suspended for 2000ms. The tips is don’t set this too high, keep it as small as it can, usually the minimum should be the RTT.

Cut-off latency and Packet loss pull back time only affect transmit direction, if you want them to have effect on both transmit and receive, you’ll need to have both PepVPN peers upgraded to firmware 6.2.0 (most updated version is beta 3 for now) and configure these advanced settings on both ends.

Please note that the operation (Cut-off latency and Packet loss pull back time) described above happens on back end only, and will not be noticeable on PepVPN status via Web Admin.

Feel free to ask any questions about these advanced SpeedFusion features and of course if you have any suggestions, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

To learn more about firmware 6.2.0 beta 2, check out the announcement there:

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2

Hi,

Do you have plans to offer the feature “Multi-Site PepVPN Profile” for models like 210 and 310? this is very useful for us but mainly our infrastructure is with the 210 and 310 models.

3

Balance 210/310 only supports 2 x active PepVPN peers, we think “Multi-Site PepVPN Profile” is only useful for those models that allow many PepVPN peers, helping users to setup large number of PepVPN connections faster and easier, so there is currently no plan to make this feature for 210/310.

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4

Hi Charris,

Do you mean you need to push PepVPN/SpeedFusion profile to remote branches in batch? If yes InControl2 will help on this. Please ensure all Balance routers support v6.1.0 and above, under warranty and registered with InControl2.

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5

Hi,

Eventually our goal is to be able to prioritaze Speedfussion connections, i.e from the Main Peplink you have 2 or more Speedfusion connections. I would like to have the ability to select a priority based on Layer 2 Speedfusion.

6

We expect Peplink to extend these features to WAN load balancing also not only SpeedFusion. we sent a feature request to deploy something like cut-off latency and packet lost pull back for internet load balancing many years ago but not deployed. guys we haven’t seen any improvement for internet load balancing on Peplink for years. please consider new algorithms , new intelligent health check detection by packet lost / latency.
by the way thanks for your efforts.

7

Hi Hootan,

Noted your point. Engineering team has been working hard to fulfill our customers need. There are many of features requested and we need to queue them up based on the priority on hand.

Thank you.

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8

Hi,
In order for these features to work do I have to update both sides of the PepVPN or only one is enough?

9

Hello,

If you want to use this on both ends, both will need to be upgraded. Otherwise this should work if only one Balance is upgraded (only for that end).

10

Ok.
How sensitive is the cut-off latency. How fast it suspends the channel with lower latency and is it visible from the PepVPN status?

11

I noticed that for the changes to take effect I have to:

  1. Make the desired changes
  2. Disable the PepVPN
  3. Apply changes
  4. Enable PepVPn
  5. Apply changes
    In other words, I have to restart the PepVPN. Otherwise it only saves the changes without applying them even after pressing the apply changes button.
12

Cut-off latency and Packet loss pull back time only affect transmit direction, if you want them to have effect on both transmit and receive, you’ll need to have both PepVPN peers upgraded to firmware 6.2.0 (most updated version is beta 3 for now) and configure these advanced settings on both ends.

Cut-off latency will temporarily suspend a tunnel when it sees a latency value larger than the user defined threshold, this will be done immediately when the latency data is updated and the fastest response time is the RTT (round-trip time). When a tunnel is temporarily suspended, health check packets are still there and latency value will be redetermined every time when a health check packet is replied from the remote side, once the latency is dropped below the defined threshold, the tunnel will become active again and start to transmit user data.

Please note that all the operation described above happens on back end only, and will not be noticeable on PepVPN status via Web Admin.

1 Like
13

Hi Platts, changing Cut-off latency and Packet loss pull back time value will not disconnect PepVPN connection and will have effect after Apply Changes. What is the firmware version of your devices? Are you running the latest 6.2.0 beta 3 firmware?

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14

I’m using the latest one - 6.2.0 beta 3. I’ll try once again.

15

Thank you very much!
I think this information is worth posting it in the technical notes. It will be usefull for many.

16

Thanks Platts, for your suggestion, we have updated the post.

Best regards.

1 Like
17

Hi, interesting features. Thank you!
If a WAN link is temporarily removed from the SFVPN by exceeding cut-off latency or by packet loss pull back will it be logged on the device when the link is taken out and when it is reinserted to the SFVPN? How can we know what the system is doing?

All the best,
Dana

18

Hi,

You may check via Status > SpeedFusion. If particular WAN link was suspended, The WAN link status color will change to Red.

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19

Hi,
Do you mean that I need to view it when it is happening in order to see the state change? Or is it logged so we can view a history of the events?

Thanks

20

Hi,

Yes. Anyway, state change normally is transparent to user (will show in green) unless all SpeedFusion tunnels on that WAN interface were suspended.

We do not have any logging at this moment.

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