WAN Balancer FAQs

I installed and configured WAN Balancer, but nothing is happening. What should I do?

Make sure each ISP's interface has is WAN Interface? checked at Config > Network > Interfaces and has all of the required information properly entered. You'll also need to verify WAN Failover has tests set up for each WAN connection. If you're only using WAN Failover, you'll need to disconnect your primary WAN to get traffic to flow over the secondary. Also verify your interface weights are set properly.

Are the bandwidth settings percentages?

No - enter bandwidth numbers for each connection that are relative to each other and Untangle will determine the proper percentages. The percentages will be displayed as numbers are entered to help you determine the proper weighting.

Why is some of my internet traffic being stopped?

Check the status of your WAN Failover service. If it has been uninstalled, is turned off or is not functioning normally and you have lost one of your internet connections, WAN Balancer may still be pushing traffic out of the down WAN.

If a route rule specifics that certain traffic should always use one WAN, what happens when that WAN is down?

If that WAN is down (and you're using WAN Failover) the traffic will be pushed out any other WANs that are still online. When those WANs come back up the route cache is flushed and they will return to their WAN.

Does WAN Balancer bond my connections?

No. A bonded connection combines the bandwidth of multiple internet connections from a single ISP into a single physical connection, often requiring additional hardware at each end of the connection.

How does WAN Balancer handle services that use the IP as the primary key or authentication mechanism?

Some sites and services use the source/client IP to identify users which can cause issue if the service uses multiple sessions as when balancing across several WANs subsequent sessions could exit another WAN and thus us a different source IP. To avoid these type of issues all sessions that are randomly assigned a WAN based on the weights (balanced) will continue to use the same WAN for all connections between a given internal IP and external IP. In other words, all sessions between A and B are sticky to a specific WAN.

How is traffic routed when WAN Balancer is not installed?

Traffic is routed based on the routing table. If you have multiple WAN interfaces, then multiple default gateways are present in the routing table. In this situation and without WAN Balancer Internet traffic is arbitrarily sent via either link. WAN Balancer enables you to have more control over how Internet traffic should be routed.

Is bypassed traffic still routed according to WAN Balancer Route Rules?

Yes. WAN Balancer writes rules directly to iptables. No decisions are made in the UVM, so bypassed traffic is still routed according to those rules.