RV042: Load Balancing Options from the manual, where to find

Hi everybody,
I just bought a new RV02. I only use it for load balancing. I use two different wan connection, one is fast and one is very slow. As I look into the manual of the router, there is a possibility to adjust the load, when the second channel will be opened. Thats very important to me, because i have to pay for the second channel, so i only want to use it, if load maybe more than 80%. Thats why i checked the manual before buying it. But it doesnt metter how i try, there is no way to adjust the balance. first i thought i would be to stupid to find it, but right now i recognized, that the foto in the maual shows a firmware version 1.2.1. Ok, so I decided to load that older firmware, but i didn´t´ ind it anywhere. the first firmware describe here is about 1.3.x. For those who didnt believe: That whats inside my manual: If Load Balance is selected, there will be two main choices: By Traffic – Intelligent Balancer (Auto) and user
defined.
First, choose the Max. Bandwidth of Upstream (64K/128K/256K/384K/512K/1024K/1.5M/2M/2.5M or above) and
Downstream (512K/1024K/1.5M/2M/2.5M or above) for WAN1 and WAN2, as provided by your ISP.
Intelligent Balancer (Auto): When choosing Intelligent Balancer, it will automatically compute the maximum
bandwidth of WAN1 and WAN2 by using Weighted Round Robin to balance the loading.
If (upstream / downstream / upstream or downstream) bandwidth is excessive (30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%,
90%), bring up the second link.
When there is an inactivity time-out (None/10min/20min/30min/40min/50min/60min), the second link will be
terminated.
Figure 5-23: Dual-WAN Smart Link Backup

That exactly the feature i need... So can anyone help me, or maybe iam only too stupid to find that option..
Thanks.

thanks, but

Thanks for your quick and long answer. Bu thats not what i like to hear. for me it doesnt matter to connect with two line at full speed. I have a cheap and fast DSL line and a much slower and expensive ISDN line. Cause of ADSL (much down / little up) I turn on 128kB more when uploading a lot. I would be happy, if i can decided at how much load the router will activate the second channel. Thats why i read the manual BEFORE buying the router. I already heared about cheap one, but I thought the linkssys is ajustable, like i ha seen on the pictures in the manual. and now, i cn do nothing but say balance auto... ok i can take your tips to make it depending on the online time, but not really depending on the load. Right know I spend much money for the router, but i cannot use it for wich i like to use it and thats only linksys changed he bios and i cannot load the old one... we cannot get faster dsl here... so this was the first step to two small dsl lines, just give it a try i tought...

Yeah, that is exactly hat discribed in my manual. But if you use newer firmware nothing will pop up if you click on load balance. so where can i find this firmware? And what is needed to get the firmware into the box (iam totally new to linksys products). Before that i tried to play a little bit wth the bandwidth, but the isdn channel is dialing much to often (nearly every 2 minutes). He stay up for 1 minute and so on. So right know i cn say stay up for 10 minutes (maybe i will tell the isdn router to kill connection meanwile) and only use the second channel if first know is about 80% for example. for me it is much cheaper to run 80% --- 10% than to run 50% --- 50% So i searche deverywhere before, were to get this firmware, and i would like to know why linksys take away this feature. i like to try al little bit to get the best solution for me. if i dont like that i can still take the auto option, i think such a load balancer requires more ptions, because there are many possiblilites to connect wan devices...

i received the router from the store with 1.3.1 i think. i read the manual and was getting crazy because i never found this auto function and the button. after a long time and looking at the pictures of the manual i noticed firmware 1.2. So i searched everywhere and tried to install the oldest firmware i found... i found the right on e 1.2.2. but it is gpl code and i dont know you to flash this. so i decided to tak ethe newest one i can found, and i read a lot of your articels, so i got 1.3.7.4 right now, but i never seen such a load balncing menue before. my windwos looks like that...

That is for sure load balancing. But it is load balancing without any option. The picture you send earlier showing firmware 1.2.3 had more options, so i can decide at with load the second channel will be used too. Wha I have right now is the auto balancer. But because i use two total diffeent lines (bandwith and the price) i think the router cannot handle it, like i would handle it manually. I need load balanc by traffic not by bandwith. So the only thin gi need is an old firmware, thats it. I read that linkssys removed this option, i think when they were going from 1.2.x to 1.3.x Is the noone who had an old firmware version ready to load? Or maybe i am to stupid to understand this. how should i use protocol binding and max bandwith to tell the router two enable the second line only when bandith of the first line exceeds 80% for example?

Thanks.

There is a firmware 1.2.2 available at linksys. Bu it is only downloadable as a gpl code. I have nothing here to build the code... I have a screenshot of my original manual, it was delifered as an pdf file on an original linksys cd showing how to manage load balancing. the screenshot shows version 1.2.1 with the feature i need...

I will try to contact linksys via live chat. thanks a lot anyway. is there a small how to build firmaare from gpl ? the release note of 1.3.1 say someting about that they have chanceg load balancing...

That what i mean before. So I will need some firmware befopre 1.3.1. i tested the router, but i cannot use the bandwith option with my constelation. it makes no sense to me to split the bandwith from the beginning. it makes sense for me to take a second line if a special limit is reached. so maybe somewhere or someone have an old firmaware for me? by the way i cannot understand, that linksys is slling this router which such an old manual with such old prints in it..

Does anyone know how the RV042 uses those max bandwidth settings that you entered in the load balance page? Do those speeds affect the load distiribution between the two WANs?

Buddel would like to see some way of controlling the partitioning of the load as the old firmware had. I have not experimented with this yet so everything I will say is speculation, but perhaps the maximum bandwidth speed settings might influence the load partitioning.

If one has two WAN connections with unequal speeds, then the router shouldn't be trying to send equal amounts of packets across each, but should at least balance the sent packets in proportion to the speeds. So if one connection that isn't to be used as much has its max bandwidth speeds deliberately under reported, then maybe the router will shift traffic away from that WAN. This might be worth a try to see if it works this way.

Well to answer my own question somewhat, deliberately lowering/under reporting the secondary WAN's maximum download speed setting on the load balance page to 1/10th of the primary line's speed on an RV082 did NOT result in the primary line being used ten times more on a group of speed tests.

Edit: Upon further testing, I find that the above statement isn't completely valid. Various types of speed tests -- Java-based, flash-based, etc -- are complicated as to how the download AND upload speed proportions control which WAN is used for the test. See my next post.

As far as I can see so far, it made no difference to any operation of the router. When the primary line is fully utilized with a download, then the secondary line can still download at full speed and not the deliberately reduced speed that had been entered for the max speeds.

In an effort to determine if the bandwidth settings:

WAN1 = Primary upstream speed set in router = U1
WAN2 = Secondary upstream speed set in router = U2

X = WAN1 proportion of total upload speed available = U1/(U1+U2)

controlled the distribution of usage between the WANs on the RV082 using firmware 1.3.2, I carried out several PingPlotter tests with various upload proportional speed settings. Pingplotter will capture the route switches between WAN1 and WAN2 during an extented ping test. I ran tests that were 500 pings long and then analysed the proportion of pings going out on WAN1 vs. WAN2.

P = Proportion of pings going out WAN1 = Number of WAN1 pings/500

When the upload bandwith settings were set to their actual upload speeds the resulting X was 0.673 and the ping test yielded a P of 0.682.

I deliberately lowered the WAN1 upload speed setting so that the new X proportion was 0.158. The ping test resulted in a P of 0.134.

Changing the upload speed settings did not limit the download speeds in any way. Two simultaneous FTP download threads would result in the speed of both lines being full used.

So apparently if you wanted to bias the usage to an inexpensive WAN1 line vs an expensive metered WAN2 line, you would simply set the WAN2 downstream and upsteam speeds to be extremely low. The degree of bias would be determined by the proportion of speeds for WAN1/(WAN1+WAN2).

Toxic, does the dual WAN operation I've described also apply to the RV042? I don't have that router available for testing.

One thing I've also found is that the upload speed proportions often times will control the download speeds. Once you think about this it all makes sense.

For example, you have two connections: one fast and one slow, but if you "bias" the entered max upstream bandwidth to favor the slow WAN, then the router will preferentially make connections on that side and then use that connection its upload OR download speeds. This is the case for a connection to an FTP server.

However, there are other speed tests that do not work that way such as the NDT test: http://netspeed.stanford.edu/. These tests do the upload speed test first on one WAN, and then use the other WAN connection for the download speeds. Very bizzare.

OK, another thought just occurred to me. Quite a few people have complained about having to bind the https protocol to one WAN or the other to be able to use banking sites, etc. which sort of defeats the purpose of the dual WAN. I've seen no problem like that accessing and browsing around https sites such as PayPal or credit card sites (but I haven't actually uploaded any information to them though).

Perhaps the problem is caused when broadband connections with equal speeds are used and the max upstream and downstream speeds entered on the load balancing page are set to be equal for each WAN. This means that when someone is browsing and opens a new or second connection at a banking site, there is a 50/50 chance that the next connection will be through the other WAN so the IP will be different from the original connecting IP which apparently the https sites do not like for security reasons.

My two WANs have widely different speeds and these are entered this way on the load balancing page. There is much less chance that I will ever connect to an https site with the second WAN and so I've not had any problems with https sites.

Perhaps instead of binding the https protocol to to one of the WANs, people could deliberately set their second WAN upload speed to that the ratio between the two is very high, say 100 to 1, even though the two broadband connections are of equal speeds. This will bias the WAN usage to the "supposed" faster upload side. In a busy office environment, then most of the traffic will go out that side, but IF that WAN is full the traffic will "roll over" to the other WAN.

It seems this solution would greatly reduce the possibility that a second connection to an https site would use the IP of the other WAN, but unlike the binding method it would allow the second WAN to be used if needed.