Ideas and equipment for load balanced broadband setup
Discussion
I'm in the middle of moving from a town with the usual high speed internet options, to a small village with very basic ADSL. What makes this even worse is there are 2 cabinets in the village, one was upgraded as part of the SuperFastEssex.org initiative, and the other wasn't. And you can guess which one I'm connected to :-(
A quick speed test using my phone on the current owners WiFi showed 6.5Mpbs download, and 0.7Mbps upload. Oh dear. I will be ordering a new BT business line (with the 4G backup dongle) and I believe you can get a new line put in when they install it. Fingers crossed that improves the speed a bit.
There is also another option of microwave based services and I've found 2 companies who offer this in the area. One of these came round for a survey and couldn't get a line-of-sight to their aerial from the property, so they're out, and now I'm waiting for another to do their survey next week. If it works it would be anything up to 30Mbps download speed so then I'd like to use both the BT line and microwave line at the same time for redundancy / performance reasons.
Has anyone got a setup like this already and what equipment do you use?
The advice I've read is that I should use a dedicated modem that support SNR tweaking to maximise the copper broadband line, like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Billion-7800DXL-Wireless-...
That would take care of the BT connection plus 4G backup dongle. But it can't do load balancing so I'd need something else paired with it, to either do load balancing + Wifi, or just load balancing and then sort the Wifi out with a separate system.
Load balancer on its own: http://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/11749-tp-li... Maybe pair that with some Ubiquiti APs all over the house (its quite large and may warrant this anyway)
Or load balancer with Wifi: http://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/30262-drayt...
As a curve ball I've also read about BufferBloat and needing a router with Smart Queue Management to solve it - but perhaps only an issue if using fibre? http://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/21797-ubiqu...
So far I'm swaying towards:
- Billion modem (with 4G backup)
- Simple load balancer on its own like the netgear one
- Ubiquiti APs
If the setup is getting too complex I may need to drop the SNR stuff and keep it simple with an all-in-one like: http://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/30262-drayt...
Any help or suggestions for other avenues to explore welcome!
A quick speed test using my phone on the current owners WiFi showed 6.5Mpbs download, and 0.7Mbps upload. Oh dear. I will be ordering a new BT business line (with the 4G backup dongle) and I believe you can get a new line put in when they install it. Fingers crossed that improves the speed a bit.
There is also another option of microwave based services and I've found 2 companies who offer this in the area. One of these came round for a survey and couldn't get a line-of-sight to their aerial from the property, so they're out, and now I'm waiting for another to do their survey next week. If it works it would be anything up to 30Mbps download speed so then I'd like to use both the BT line and microwave line at the same time for redundancy / performance reasons.
Has anyone got a setup like this already and what equipment do you use?
The advice I've read is that I should use a dedicated modem that support SNR tweaking to maximise the copper broadband line, like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Billion-7800DXL-Wireless-...
That would take care of the BT connection plus 4G backup dongle. But it can't do load balancing so I'd need something else paired with it, to either do load balancing + Wifi, or just load balancing and then sort the Wifi out with a separate system.
Load balancer on its own: http://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/11749-tp-li... Maybe pair that with some Ubiquiti APs all over the house (its quite large and may warrant this anyway)
Or load balancer with Wifi: http://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/30262-drayt...
As a curve ball I've also read about BufferBloat and needing a router with Smart Queue Management to solve it - but perhaps only an issue if using fibre? http://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/21797-ubiqu...
So far I'm swaying towards:
- Billion modem (with 4G backup)
- Simple load balancer on its own like the netgear one
- Ubiquiti APs
If the setup is getting too complex I may need to drop the SNR stuff and keep it simple with an all-in-one like: http://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/30262-drayt...
Any help or suggestions for other avenues to explore welcome!
megaphone said:
The TP link Load balancing routers work well, I've been using the bigger TL-ER5120 for years, easy to set-up and works well.
I have two BT lines with openreach modems. Then off to Unifi access points.
Thanks. I realised after I double checked the specs better it was only 100Mbps - not a problem for now but the model you have would be better long term.I have two BT lines with openreach modems. Then off to Unifi access points.
Edited by megaphone on Monday 10th August 08:26
Are those modems for ADSL or VDSL, and have you found any issue setting it all up?
TallMark said:
megaphone said:
The TP link Load balancing routers work well, I've been using the bigger TL-ER5120 for years, easy to set-up and works well.
I have two BT lines with openreach modems. Then off to Unifi access points.
Thanks. I realised after I double checked the specs better it was only 100Mbps - not a problem for now but the model you have would be better long term.I have two BT lines with openreach modems. Then off to Unifi access points.
Edited by megaphone on Monday 10th August 08:26
Are those modems for ADSL or VDSL, and have you found any issue setting it all up?
eg. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BT-Openreach-Huawei-Ech...
ETA, noticed you said you can only get ADSL, so probably not relevant! Plenty of older ADSL modems out there for next to nothing.
Edited by megaphone on Monday 10th August 11:05
I am doing this with a Ubiquiti USG. Fixed wireless broadband provider on one WAN interface and Vodafone 4G on the other.
Works pretty well.
It’s useful if you have the ability to define policy based routes so for example set your home office stuff on one port and kids devices on another. They’ll failover in either direction when necessary. You can do this with the USG but only by CLI.
Note you’re not “bonding” the links in any sense so you don’t generally realise the benefit of the combined aggregate bandwidth from a single device. To do that requires something at the other end of the links to be able to treat them as one. I’m looking at implementing an enterprise SDWAN solution to achieve this.
Works pretty well.
It’s useful if you have the ability to define policy based routes so for example set your home office stuff on one port and kids devices on another. They’ll failover in either direction when necessary. You can do this with the USG but only by CLI.
Note you’re not “bonding” the links in any sense so you don’t generally realise the benefit of the combined aggregate bandwidth from a single device. To do that requires something at the other end of the links to be able to treat them as one. I’m looking at implementing an enterprise SDWAN solution to achieve this.
megaphone said:
What's the 4G like? Might be a better option to go full 4G.
From the simple test of trying to use my phone in the house it was pretty poor, but may be better if I could get the dongle/aerial on the roof. Will need to try it... at the moment we are still in the process of exchanging/completing so I'm limited in what I can try.Is it even possible to get 4G external aerials to improve performance? Will have a google.
TallMark said:
From the simple test of trying to use my phone in the house it was pretty poor, but may be better if I could get the dongle/aerial on the roof. Will need to try it... at the moment we are still in the process of exchanging/completing so I'm limited in what I can try.
Is it even possible to get 4G external aerials to improve performance? Will have a google.
Yes. They make a big difference in marginal signal situations.Is it even possible to get 4G external aerials to improve performance? Will have a google.
theboss said:
I am doing this with a Ubiquiti USG. Fixed wireless broadband provider on one WAN interface and Vodafone 4G on the other.
Works pretty well.
It’s useful if you have the ability to define policy based routes so for example set your home office stuff on one port and kids devices on another. They’ll failover in either direction when necessary. You can do this with the USG but only by CLI.
Note you’re not “bonding” the links in any sense so you don’t generally realise the benefit of the combined aggregate bandwidth from a single device. To do that requires something at the other end of the links to be able to treat them as one. I’m looking at implementing an enterprise SDWAN solution to achieve this.
Thanks. I'm considering a proper bonded solution as well (would just be multiple ADSL links) but if I want the wireless broadband I need to stick to load balancing. What I've been told by others who've done this is that in practice most bandwidth-heavy services like streaming video etc actually make multiple connections so in effect you do see a benefit even though a single connection wouldn't. I'll take a look at the Ubiquiti USG too.Works pretty well.
It’s useful if you have the ability to define policy based routes so for example set your home office stuff on one port and kids devices on another. They’ll failover in either direction when necessary. You can do this with the USG but only by CLI.
Note you’re not “bonding” the links in any sense so you don’t generally realise the benefit of the combined aggregate bandwidth from a single device. To do that requires something at the other end of the links to be able to treat them as one. I’m looking at implementing an enterprise SDWAN solution to achieve this.
theboss said:
TallMark said:
From the simple test of trying to use my phone in the house it was pretty poor, but may be better if I could get the dongle/aerial on the roof. Will need to try it... at the moment we are still in the process of exchanging/completing so I'm limited in what I can try.
Is it even possible to get 4G external aerials to improve performance? Will have a google.
Yes. They make a big difference in marginal signal situations.Is it even possible to get 4G external aerials to improve performance? Will have a google.
TallMark said:
Any recommendations?
Poynting Directional antenna.It took a bit of trial and error - to find the mast - but made massive improvement on speed.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Poynting-4G-XPOL-A0002-Po...
TallMark said:
Thanks. I'm considering a proper bonded solution as well (would just be multiple ADSL links) but if I want the wireless broadband I need to stick to load balancing. What I've been told by others who've done this is that in practice most bandwidth-heavy services like streaming video etc actually make multiple connections so in effect you do see a benefit even though a single connection wouldn't. I'll take a look at the Ubiquiti USG too.
That's true in some cases but I very rarely see it happening myself. Some services don't like multiple connections being sourced from different IP addresses so you can find yourself being re-authenticated or running into persistency type problems with websites. At the moment I'm running a setup which routes purely on a src-dest IP hash. I found including the port introduced more problems than it solved. I might go a step further and just route on a pure source IP basis, so a single client on my network will always use the same outbound WAN port. Generally the more granular your routing affinity, the more effective utilisation of both links, but the more problems you run into. For me, either connection is good enough for any single device, so I'd rather set a preferred WAN link per device and thus lower the contention for any one service.True bonded would be better except for the fact that you lose the diversity benefit if that ISP suffers an infrastructure problem. If you could have bonded VDSL lines and LTE for kids usage and backup that would be the best of both worlds.
Edited by theboss on Monday 10th August 13:26
theboss said:
I am doing this with a Ubiquiti USG. Fixed wireless broadband provider on one WAN interface and Vodafone 4G on the other.
Works pretty well.
It’s useful if you have the ability to define policy based routes so for example set your home office stuff on one port and kids devices on another. They’ll failover in either direction when necessary. You can do this with the USG but only by CLI.
Note you’re not “bonding” the links in any sense so you don’t generally realise the benefit of the combined aggregate bandwidth from a single device. To do that requires something at the other end of the links to be able to treat them as one. I’m looking at implementing an enterprise SDWAN solution to achieve this.
Hi, which model are you using? I looked at the USG Pro which has 2 WAN ports, but the regular one only appears to have 1 unless I am misunderstanding or you can re-assign them. Neither of them specifically mention load balancing and you said it was via command line, so I am wondering if one of the TP Link devices might be easier?Works pretty well.
It’s useful if you have the ability to define policy based routes so for example set your home office stuff on one port and kids devices on another. They’ll failover in either direction when necessary. You can do this with the USG but only by CLI.
Note you’re not “bonding” the links in any sense so you don’t generally realise the benefit of the combined aggregate bandwidth from a single device. To do that requires something at the other end of the links to be able to treat them as one. I’m looking at implementing an enterprise SDWAN solution to achieve this.
At the moment I'm drawn towards Ubiquiti Access Points and a switch, primarily because I really like the look of their monitoring interface, but not sure the USG is going to be flexible enough for the future if I try and use ADSL, wireless and 4G all together.
There was a fairly recent threat about bonded DSL a few weeks ago:
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Might be worth a read. The Sharedband system that Uno use could be used with third party providers as well, so in theory you could bond the DSL with the 4G connection, but you'd need to talk to them about the practicalities of it.
I used a Unifi USG with the bonded connections as per that thread, along with a wifi point to point link and it was 'frustrating' - it may have changed since but the USG setup required manual config (not via the Unifi UI) to get it to work, and firmware updates repeatedly broke it. I ended up with an Edgerouter POE which worked perfectly once set up.
If there's another cabinet in the village which can get faster speeds, have a look and see if you have line of sight to any of the houses that can get it, and then ask them very nicely if you could either pay for their connection in exchange for them putting a point to point wifi link to you, or put another line in for you. I went this route for about 12 months with a 1 mile link to a local farm where I had a second line installed.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Might be worth a read. The Sharedband system that Uno use could be used with third party providers as well, so in theory you could bond the DSL with the 4G connection, but you'd need to talk to them about the practicalities of it.
I used a Unifi USG with the bonded connections as per that thread, along with a wifi point to point link and it was 'frustrating' - it may have changed since but the USG setup required manual config (not via the Unifi UI) to get it to work, and firmware updates repeatedly broke it. I ended up with an Edgerouter POE which worked perfectly once set up.
If there's another cabinet in the village which can get faster speeds, have a look and see if you have line of sight to any of the houses that can get it, and then ask them very nicely if you could either pay for their connection in exchange for them putting a point to point wifi link to you, or put another line in for you. I went this route for about 12 months with a 1 mile link to a local farm where I had a second line installed.
Edited by random_username on Wednesday 12th August 11:12
I've run mulit-WAN setups at home at various times. Not specifically microwave links but I've found some principles I followed have helped immensely in terms of flexibility and future proofing. The over arching principle I followed was that when making your home network more complex, it really helps to move away from all-in-one to fit-for-purposes appliances for different things. Principally:
- WiFi taken care of by one set of devices for that job. For me that meant hard wiring Ubiquiti access points for great coverage everywhere
- Routing and firewall taken care of by another appliance. In my case that means a pfSense router with four ethernet ports dedicated to WAN connections.
- Connection to the particular internet provider is done by a device dedicated to just that job. So for xDSL that means a BTOR or Draytek modem, for Virgin the superhub in modem mode and for 4G/LTE it was a Mikrotik SXT device mounted high up on a chimney for maximum gains.
It takes time and learning but ultimately I can route things however I want, load balanced, policy based or something else. My Wifi gives me 50Mbps minimum anywhere seamlessly within the third of an acre footprint my home and garden are in and if I wanted to take on a microwave provider I'd change nothing except plug their modem into one of my pfSense ethernet ports and maybe adjust one or two policies on the router. As new WiFi standards emerge I just replace the UAPs with more capable versions while everything else carries on doing its job well. Kids get a fraction of the available bandwidth given over to them, guests are segregated from the rest of the network and IoT stuff reports back to their masters in China without knowing anything else about things I run at home as they are on their own VLAN.
It sounds like you're already thinking this way so take your time and do your research and i'm sure you'll end up happy that you've got a solution fit for your use case.
- WiFi taken care of by one set of devices for that job. For me that meant hard wiring Ubiquiti access points for great coverage everywhere
- Routing and firewall taken care of by another appliance. In my case that means a pfSense router with four ethernet ports dedicated to WAN connections.
- Connection to the particular internet provider is done by a device dedicated to just that job. So for xDSL that means a BTOR or Draytek modem, for Virgin the superhub in modem mode and for 4G/LTE it was a Mikrotik SXT device mounted high up on a chimney for maximum gains.
It takes time and learning but ultimately I can route things however I want, load balanced, policy based or something else. My Wifi gives me 50Mbps minimum anywhere seamlessly within the third of an acre footprint my home and garden are in and if I wanted to take on a microwave provider I'd change nothing except plug their modem into one of my pfSense ethernet ports and maybe adjust one or two policies on the router. As new WiFi standards emerge I just replace the UAPs with more capable versions while everything else carries on doing its job well. Kids get a fraction of the available bandwidth given over to them, guests are segregated from the rest of the network and IoT stuff reports back to their masters in China without knowing anything else about things I run at home as they are on their own VLAN.
It sounds like you're already thinking this way so take your time and do your research and i'm sure you'll end up happy that you've got a solution fit for your use case.
I use Draytek dual WAN routers at work for this sort of thing.
Basically you pop one connection through their own router and into the Draytek. The other the Draytek acts as a modem and connects up. Then you just choose how you want the Draytek to handle the two lines. We usually send certain port/destination traffic one way (eg. email), and web traffic another. You can set it to auto-failover if one of the lines goes off.
They're ~£200, they do wifi and they also do 4G dongles (not used one for that mind).
They're not all fancy like the Unifi stuff, but they work reliably.
Basically you pop one connection through their own router and into the Draytek. The other the Draytek acts as a modem and connects up. Then you just choose how you want the Draytek to handle the two lines. We usually send certain port/destination traffic one way (eg. email), and web traffic another. You can set it to auto-failover if one of the lines goes off.
They're ~£200, they do wifi and they also do 4G dongles (not used one for that mind).
They're not all fancy like the Unifi stuff, but they work reliably.
Thank you all for advice so far - too many to thank individually.
I have flip-flopped between a few different options but seem to be settling on something that lets me add to it slowly over time (echoing a post a few up in fact), and replace things step by step as I grow. I don't want to overspec some business level equipment on day 1, struggle to configure it all properly, and end up with a semi-broken setup. The original idea to use Ubiquit USG or UDM (or pro versions) has gone out the window - I love the idea of the Unifi software but the rest just seems to bring too many headaches and I don't want to spend my life on the command line.
In the last couple of days I had the good news that the second wireless broadband company got a good signal. I also got some quotes for a dedicated ethernet cable to the property. They started off at the top end of just-about-workable, but since checking the street plan and existing ducting the quotes have been going north since then. As an absolute last resort I may still consider it though.
So, plan so far:
Step 1 - Start with a Draytek 2926ac dual WAN load balancing router, plus Vigor 130 modem. The modem lets me tweak the SNR to get a faster speed and the two devices can share stats so one GUI can monitor them both. So from day 1 I'm up and running with ADSL / routing / firewall / small switch / wifi.
Step 2 - When wireless broadband is ready I can add that into the Draytek router and configure load balancing. This should jump me from 10Mbps to 40Mbps (in aggregate) if all goes well.
Step 3 - When I get round to setting up CCTV I can start wiring in Ubiquiti APs around the house, and start ditching the wifi on the Draytek and use the APs instead.
Step 4 - If the wireless service works reliably I can consider buying a second package, and doubling up the speed. At that point I need to swap the dual-WAN router for another device that supports more ports and higher performance. I'll almost certainly lose the wifi but by this point it's not required anyway. I'm thinking of another Draytek unit - the Vigor 3910 for this to keep it a simple upgrade path, but the TPLink ER5120 may be a cheaper option.
Step 5 - if I want to trial a 4G link I can do that too - either directly into the first router, or via a 4G modem if I've moved onto the second by then.
Last things to make my mind up on are a POE switch (at least 16 ports for cameras and APs), probably to live in the loft/upstairs cupboard for easier cable runs, and a rack to house all the items downstairs in the study or some other storage room. As I know virtually nothing about racks I welcome suggestions again.
I have flip-flopped between a few different options but seem to be settling on something that lets me add to it slowly over time (echoing a post a few up in fact), and replace things step by step as I grow. I don't want to overspec some business level equipment on day 1, struggle to configure it all properly, and end up with a semi-broken setup. The original idea to use Ubiquit USG or UDM (or pro versions) has gone out the window - I love the idea of the Unifi software but the rest just seems to bring too many headaches and I don't want to spend my life on the command line.
In the last couple of days I had the good news that the second wireless broadband company got a good signal. I also got some quotes for a dedicated ethernet cable to the property. They started off at the top end of just-about-workable, but since checking the street plan and existing ducting the quotes have been going north since then. As an absolute last resort I may still consider it though.
So, plan so far:
Step 1 - Start with a Draytek 2926ac dual WAN load balancing router, plus Vigor 130 modem. The modem lets me tweak the SNR to get a faster speed and the two devices can share stats so one GUI can monitor them both. So from day 1 I'm up and running with ADSL / routing / firewall / small switch / wifi.
Step 2 - When wireless broadband is ready I can add that into the Draytek router and configure load balancing. This should jump me from 10Mbps to 40Mbps (in aggregate) if all goes well.
Step 3 - When I get round to setting up CCTV I can start wiring in Ubiquiti APs around the house, and start ditching the wifi on the Draytek and use the APs instead.
Step 4 - If the wireless service works reliably I can consider buying a second package, and doubling up the speed. At that point I need to swap the dual-WAN router for another device that supports more ports and higher performance. I'll almost certainly lose the wifi but by this point it's not required anyway. I'm thinking of another Draytek unit - the Vigor 3910 for this to keep it a simple upgrade path, but the TPLink ER5120 may be a cheaper option.
Step 5 - if I want to trial a 4G link I can do that too - either directly into the first router, or via a 4G modem if I've moved onto the second by then.
Last things to make my mind up on are a POE switch (at least 16 ports for cameras and APs), probably to live in the loft/upstairs cupboard for easier cable runs, and a rack to house all the items downstairs in the study or some other storage room. As I know virtually nothing about racks I welcome suggestions again.
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