Intro
I got an offer for $20/month broadband access from Centurylink. It got me to thinking, could I somehow use that as a backup connection to my current cable ISP? How would that work? Could I use a Raspberry Pi as a WAN load-balancing router?
The details
Well I’m not sure about using Raspberry Pi. It’s not so simple.
But I just wanted to mention there are solutions out there in the marketplace to this very problem. They’re not that easy to find, hence this article. They’re mostly aimed at small businesses where Internet connectivity is very important, like an Internet cafe.
This Cisco dual WAN router for $157 would do the trick:
Or for about the same price, this Linksys Dual WAN router:
Want to go consumer grade and save money? This TP-Link model is only about $85:
But it’s ports are only 100 mbps, which is kind of surprising in this day and age.
DIY approach for the intrepid
There now appears to be a Raspberry Pi solution since the advent of RPi 4 and OpenWRT support for ARM. This post is amazingly detailed: Raspberry Pi as a home router. The latest generation of Raspberry Pi… | by Vladimír Záhradník | The Startup | Medium
So the idea there would be to get OpenWRT running on an RPi 4, then explore running multi-WAN on OpenWRT: LEDE/OpenWRT — Setting Up Multi-WAN | by CT WiFi | LEDE/OpenWrt & IoT | Medium
Conclusion
We have identified commercial solutions to the question: can I use two ISPs at home to provide high availability and load-balancing. I have my doubts however and I think running OpenWRT may be the best option.
2 replies on “WAN load-balancing routers”
Why even suggest the TP-LINK TL-R480T router?
It does not have IPv6
Unless you’re outside of the US, I don’t think support for iPv6 is that important. Am I wrong? Please provide reasons why it matters.