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Fiber link drops connection when I enable Load balance with Rain

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etherion

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I'm trying to set up a higher reliable connection. I have a TP-link tl-r600vpn router and Afrihost/Frogfoot fiber with a 4G Rain modem.

The fibre link works fine if I have the 4G modem as failover. If I enable Load balancing so that both are used at the same time based on the bandwidth the fiber gets disconnected.

Is the problem on my side or is this Afrihost/Frogfoot not wanting traffic meshing? Any advice would be appreciated.
 
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What is your cabling setup and what router does the fibre and LTE terminate on? Does Afrihost use PPPoE?

You should be able to check each connection/session:

Load balancer to fibre router
Load balancer to LTE modem
Fibre router to ONT (PPPoE session)
LTE modem to highsite
 
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Your fibre provider shouldn't be able to tell if you're load balancing/meshing

An easy way to test this would be to use Sophos Home Firewall (free for home use). Install it on an old desktop with an add-on 2 port NIC, And setup a LAN-WAN rule using load balancing. This uses a weighted round robin algorithm. The traffic that Sophos Firewall distributes among WAN links is in proportion to the weight assigned to them. The setup is pretty well documented on the Sophos forum/community so it's easy to setup.
You'll also get much much greater functionality out of Sophos when it comes to traffic shaping, content filtering, VPN, network authentication, etc. It's a bit overkill for a home setup but the possibilities just make me🤤

I've used WAN load balancing on Sophos XG with Rain 4G and Liquid Fibre and it works flawlessly.
 
Define disconnected,i'd asume user/local error first

Sent from my F1 using Tapatalk
 
Light goes off on the fiber modem and router shows disconnect. I think it has to do with the packets going out via one links and the coming back in with another. It looks like when that happens frogfood boots my link.
 
Light goes off on the fiber modem and router shows disconnect. I think it has to do with the packets going out via one links and the coming back in with another. It looks like when that happens frogfood boots my link.

So you're saying that the TP-link router is controlling the fibre router internet connection? ie. making it switch off
 
@Caliph I am thinking that once Froogfoot/Fiber detects that packets are coming in or going out that does not behave they kill the connection from there side. If I set the TP-link to enable the load balancing the fibre line disconnects within 10seconds. else if I have it as fibre WAN1 primary and the Rain connection is WAN2 with failover then both lines remain fine.

I don't know what the terminologies are so persuing Afrihost support(Froogfoot fibre) to address this is a terrorizing prospect
 
I'd hope a load balancing capable device would use persistent routing to send and receive traffic through the correct route and combine afterwards and have an idle-keepalive to prevent disconnects,this still sounds suspect
Do you have a spare router to use on the fibre gateway and see if it exhibits the same? When you load balance that through the TP Link

Sent from my F1 using Tapatalk
 
@PsyWulf O that is an idea. So you are suggesting adding a router between the fiber modem and the TP link. I will do that tonight and see how it goes.
 
@PsyWulf Well I did your suggested setup and the same thing happened but between the intermediate router and the TP-Link box. So is not Afrihost/frogfoot that caused it.

Turned out that I had the rule under load balance -> back-up link which was the cause. When I delete the rule both links remain up and it does look like it is working now.
 
Im just glad its working now. A knock-on effect was when I switch routers Afrihost required me to reactivate my line which caused me to lose a lot of sleep fault-finding till 3am. Eventually realized what was up and that it takes time for the activation to really be active after getting the OTP. This morning everything was working as I hoped.

Another thing that I discovered was that Rain(4G) between 2 and 4am is well over +6Mbps. vs at best 1mbs during the day. but 1mbs is better than nothing and let's hope the TP-link gives me a better online experience with it having two links.
 
Im just glad its working now. A knock-on effect was when I switch routers Afrihost required me to reactivate my line which caused me to lose a lot of sleep fault-finding till 3am. Eventually realized what was up and that it takes time for the activation to really be active after getting the OTP. This morning everything was working as I hoped.

Another thing that I discovered was that Rain(4G) between 2 and 4am is well over +6Mbps. vs at best 1mbs during the day. but 1mbs is better than nothing and let's hope the TP-link gives me a better online experience with it having two links.


Try using Band 38 on Rain. I peak between 25-30Mbps on the 19 hours uncapped and like 15Mbps peak on the Uncapped 24/7.
Yes i said 15Mbps peak on a 10Mbps throttled package. Their Throttling policies aren't that concrete... Of course you can only do this if your router supports it and if you have a band 38 Rain tower nearby

On standard band 3, I get a dismal 0.5 - 1.5 Mbps on both packages
 
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That made a huge difference! from 1-2mb to 4-7mb download.
 
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Nice dude!;) you should hit about 10Mbps off peak. Tower congestion is b*tch!
 
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