need help with a dual wan setup

[hehatedme]

For my home office I will have two wan connections to access the internet. Being able to failover and router stability are the most crucial components. I have come across a couple solutions but its hard to find out about reliability without hearing peoples opinions so I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with a similar setup. The couple models have come across are the hotbrick hb-lb2 and xincom dpg503. There are some cisco ones too that I have seen and I would be willing to spend the money on, but I don't know if I have the expertise to set them up.

Here's a description of the desired setup: two machines for business (the ones that need failover, uptime is critical while they are in use), one machine for home use, a voip dta, and a couple of wireless devices around the house.

So would those routers I mentioned suffice? It would be nice if they had 8 instead of 4 ports, but could I just use another router as a switch for the less critical devices and as a wireless access point? Also, would a dual wan setup reduce pings to a server, or is loss negligent? Is there a way to protect against the router failing?

I am probably leaving out a lot details, but I am not very knowledgable with networks, so any help or a point in the right direction would be appreciated.

 

[milehigh]

Linksys RV082 10/100 8 Port VPN Router

I've used the dual wan feature on this one before. You can either set it up to load balance or you can set it up simply as a failover connection.

I've got 2 or 3 of these running for going on 2 years without any problems. This might be a little overkill but not as much as going with the cisco stuff for a simple home setup.

 

[JackMDS]

The Linksys above is a good solution.

If you need Wireless too, buy the 4ports version Linksys rv04 and add another Router with 4 ports and Wireless configured as an Access Point.

 

[spidey07]

I'm not sure if the linksys will do it but it's typical to actually have two routers, one on each connection. This covers circuit failure and hardware failure.

You're looking for the router to support VRRP or (cisco only HSRP). Linksys may have even support gateway load balancing protocol so you could get a little better performance.

 

[mooseracing]

Cisco 1800 series works great. We run a 1812 with dual wan. There are plenty of scripts out there walk throughs for IOS, there is also a GUI config for it.

 

[hehatedme]

Thanks for the replies guys. Spidey, how do you setup failover with two routers? Is it something that's a feature of certain routers, where you can have two of them and set them up to be linked?

 

[kevnich2]

Sorry to hijack this thread but I'm wondering about spidey's solution of having two separate router's, how would those be linked together in a failover situation? I myself am a SOHO user and currently have cable internet but will shortly be adding FIOS and I'm looking for a router that will be reliable to use the FIOS as my main connection with the cable as a failover. My current router is very reliable (Buffalo with DDWRT) but unfortunately, it doesn't do dual wan with failover. I want to simply add in another router and still keep my buffalo and have the new dual wan router upstream from my buffalo. I don't want an unreliable router that causes the internet to crash. I've looked at the linksys solutions and they get horrible reviews. I'm looking at a trendnet dual wan router but cannot find a single review about it so I'm not sure if it'll be reliable or not. There's also a firewall by zyxel (zyxel 2 I think) that has a gateway redirection feature but honestly, I'm not sure how to implement that in as it only has a single WAN port. Any ideas? My budget would probably be maximum of $250.

 

[Cooky]

For SOHO users (personal or business), it's best to stick w/ a solution that's not too complicated.
Spidey designs networks for enterprise customers, so while his solution (dual circuits w/ dual routers and dual everything else) may be standard for some groups of audience, it may not be suitable for everyone.

OP, you may need to do a cost analysis, and see how necessary it is to keep your circuit up & running...it may also be a good idea to look into having a contract w/ a local IT shop, who can provide better expertise for design & response time to restore your IT needs (servers & Internet).

There's a lot you need to take into consideration than just having a router that can support dual WAN...what kind of apps are you running on your server? or do you only need end user access to the net? What kind of Internet circuits do you currently have that can support your bandwidth demand? (both down & upstream) How about your workstation / server hardware? In order to have decent uptime, enterprises usually have dual components (RAID disks, NIC teaming, UPS...etc).

How far & advanced do you need to go?

 

[kevnich2]

I'm mainly looking for a reliable dual WAN router that doesn't cost over $500. Pretty much all that I've seen so far, if they're below $1,000 all have horrible reviews. I just want a failover solution, not a load balancing solution. Just something that sends out a ping to the gateway every few seconds and if it doesn't respond, switch over to WAN2 until WAN1 responds to pings again. I wouldn't think this would be difficult but it sure seems to be.

 

[JackMDS]

Spidey's solution is Not pretaining to simple SOHO hardware.

You need the "Big Time" independent hardware to set it his way.

With SOHO solution (I.e. few hundreds $$$ to spend) One has to go with Dual WAN Router.

 

[NickOlsen8390]

Kevnich, Look into a x86 based solution, if you have a old computer laying around its not a problem. Thats what I do, works great for me. And gives me more options then I could ever use.

 

[Slowlearner]

I have been using a Linksys RV042 for about 18 months now without issues (for cable and partial T1). As its possible that very soon I will have fios available, and the 042 cost about 150$, I would be very interested in a dual router setup. But how would this be setup?