Which product for medium office, dual wan?

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
1

I am very new to Peplink. We have a building with:
130 computers
100 IP phones
80 IP cameras
30 Ubiquiti wifi APs
WANs:
2 x wired WANs 100MB cable, and 50MB Fiber
1 x LTE by Verizon

Goal:
WAN failover, from wired to LTE
WAN load balancing - I would like to set rules for some very basic load balancing
I do NOT need VPN

Could I get a product recommendation?
I was looking at the Balance 30 LTE for example

2

That looks to be some potentially heavy throughput on the system, especially 80 IP cameras. A Balance Two might handle it, but I would dig deeper into general LAN throughput you’ll be pushing. Assume you’re using some VLANs to break that up a bit? I run a B2 with probably 400 unique IPs over several VLANs, but throughput is usually on the light side, with only a handful of cameras and a good number of printers that often just sit there. (Obviously some strategically placed switches will help).

3

I agree with @atavistic 's comments. Two easy questions:

  1. What throughput are you seeing with your present router – busiest hour on busiest day?
  2. Can you keep your IP camera traffic off of the router’s built-in switch?
4

Looking over my list again I should really clarify:
Its really only the 130 computers that connect directly to the Internet, since the phones and cameras are only connecting internally.
Of those 130 computers, maybe 80 could be online at the same time, with low to moderate use for google mail and docs

5
  1. Busiest time of day is probably peaks at 40-60 Mb/s
  2. Yes, I can keep that IP camera/IP phone traffic separate
6

IMHO, Balance Two would be good choice (note Two has a lot more internal throughput capacity than One), and give you room to grow. You’re likely to be far more limited by current WAN bandwidth than the Peplink at this point. Those internal IP cameras can use the Balance for DHCP, and a few outward streams, but I’d use switches to keep most that traffic off the router. If situation changes, pushing 80 streams is going to need a far more cu$tomized solution. Also, Ubiquiti has been slow to go to WiFi 6 - I’m slowly upgrading my Pepwaves now to AX. May want to include a few of those in the deployment, especially to dense areas. Extra antennas help a lot if you have 20+ users on a node. I think the 30 is little tighter - you might be OK now, but not much room for growth, and bandwidth needs only go in one direction. (We do around 200GB daily over the WAN, not a lot of LAN specific transfer).

7

Thanks for the follow up. I appreciate it. However I would really like an internal Sim card slot
Looks like my go for the 30 pro and if it doesnt perform well enough then Ill upgrade to the 310X

8

If your budget allows it you can’t go wrong with the B310X. There are others that would likely be fine but the 310X is a safe bet and you should have some good “headroom.”

1 Like