Will peplink routers work in my small peer-to-peer lan with skype video?

Forgive my ignorance - I’m a marketing person in a small company, tasked with fixing our bandwidth problems, so I’m learning but cannot seem to find anything anywhere about using these types of load balancing routers on a peer-to-peer network (no domain controller, no vpn, nothing - currently have T1 modem (which is also acting as dhcp server) feeding a switch that everyone is plugged directly into).

Will these routers work this way? I’ll be adding 1 or 2 cable modems to the T1, depending on how I think this will work. I’m guessing I’ll just plug the modems into the peplink router, then plug the peplink router into the switch.??

Will the peplink router be able to act as my dhcp server in this type of setup?

Also - the reason I’m needing so much more bandwidth is because we are starting to do lots of video conferencing (currently using skype but maybe using something else in the future). We may sometimes need to have 2 or 3 different video conferences at the same time. which peplink routers will give me enough control to route a specific port number to a specific wan connection? or a specific lan ip address to a specific wan connection?

Thanks for any answers or advice!

Kathy

Hi KathyS,

It sounds like Peplink will be a perfect solution for you. Peplink Balance’s have a built in DHCP that will be able to handle this task for your network. You will want to turn your T1 into a bridge so it is no longer handling DHCP. Your T1 modem will now plug into a WAN port on the Peplink. The Peplink’s LAN will connect to your switch. You then can add additional Cable connections to the Peplink’s other WAN ports. This will allow you to utilize all the connections. You can utilize outbound policies to create rules like you are asking about. You can create rules based on port, domain, source IP and destination IP. This will give you the ability to shape traffic down the various connections that you see fit. All the Peplink’s will be able to control the traffic for you. It is more important to look at the amount of bandwidth, clients on the LAN and growth potential to determine what unit is best for your needs. I hope this helps. If you have more questions please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Thanks Mike

Thank you Michael - your answer was very helpful. I am also talking via email and PM with a coworker of yours - I am sorry but I just now realized the PM and this post were from two different people.

I am now convinced that the Peplink is definitely the product line I need to be looking at, now I’m just narrowing my selection down to which model.

Thanks again.