Throttle expensive connections

Hi,

If I have a Starlink connection and 4G/5G backup connection and there seems to be no way to control the expense incurred on connections.

Starlink is unlimited data and fast whereas my roaming 4G/5G is reasonably fast but very expensive data. Surely there must be a way to apply a bandwidth constraint on a backup connection when the main connection (Starlink) occasionally fails to prevent significant cost on 4G as a backup connection? Users don’t know a failover has occurred.

I’m familiar with all the bandwidth control section but it all relates to applications and QoS and load balancing, nothing to do with applying a throttle to all traffic passing on a specific connection. Unless there is a hidden menu under one of those help screens somewhere ?

Thanks.

I’d suggest that slowing (throttling) traffic may not be what you want to do. Rather, use Outbound Policy to determine what traffic goes where. It’s a very powerful tool.

The problem with that approach is that it assumes you apply that balancing all the time.

I only want to use 4g connections if Starlink fails, and if starlink fails I want to bandwidth limit 4g so I dont run up a huge roaming bill.

No. Look at the various algorithms available. Balancing is only one of several, and probably not the most useful in your situation. You could, for example, say:

  • The TV in the bedroom used for steaming can only use Starlink, but the TV in the living room will use Starlink and only use cellular if Starlink is interrupted
  • Steve’s phone will use Starlink first and if it fails then use cellular
  • The SIP phone uses the SpeedFusion Connect Protect [quite a “mouthful”] tunnel when available and when not uses Starlink, then cellular (having previously established such a tunnel for WAN smoothing)
  • All devices on the guest LAN segment (VLAN) may only use Starlink.

What I am suggesting is Peplink has provides excellent features to manage traffic – not just slow it down.

I totally understand what you are saying, and those features are indeed very useful.

However, the problem I initially reported remains. A very fast 5G connection that is very expensive while roaming can rack up cost very quickly. You can’t have it as a backup connection even for phones, as phones see WiFi and start uploading/downloading at full speed over it.

You can build all the fancy rules you like, but if you cant throttle the connection you are exposing yourself to very high costs - hence why I posted this in feature requests. Not that I expect it to be implemented, Peplink themselves make money on your burning through SFC 5G data!

1 Like

I have a feature request already on this:

and

https://forum.peplink.com/t/Ability-to-throttle-certain-devicesgroups-when-on-backup-WAN/61d46444165b2d89c31c18ff/1

Please reply to those threads

I will certainly add a comment but it doesn’t look like Peplink want to do this given the first thread is 3 years old.