• MESHdesk and APdesk now offer multi-WAN support.
• This allows you to ensure that your customers are always connected.
• The multi-WAN feature includes the following options
  • Support for a number of Ethernet ports that can be used as a WAN connection.
  • Support for up to three radios that can be used for WAN over WiFi.
  • Support for up to six LTE modems.
• You can use any combination of these connection types and customise them to suit your needs.
• We offer two modes:
  • Load balancing
  • Failover
• In load balancing mode, the active and standby connections can in turn be grouped and weighted (to distribute data traffic).
• Next, we will look at the Multi-WAN Profiles applet and finally see how easy it is to apply these profiles to devices.

• The Multi-WAN Profiles applet is located under the Other panel selection.

• A functional multi-WAN profile consists of the following:
  • A name, which can be thought of as a folder of sorts, under which the interfaces are grouped. There is also a site-wide option that makes the multi-WAN profile available for all clouds in RADIUSdesk.
  • One or more interfaces used for WAN access.

• There will be two gentle reminders with instructions on how to make the multi-WAN profile usable.
• The first one will remind you to add at least one interface.

• The second one will remind you to apply a policy after you added an interface to the multi-WAN profile.

• Each multi-WAN profile has an associated policy.
• This is where you specify the mode of the multi-WAN profile and the weight of each interface along with the role in the case of fail-over mode.

• After you applied the policy the multi-WAN profile is ready for prime time.
• In the next section we will cover how to apply the to a device and also the reporting on the status of the multi-WAN connections.

• Each interface that you define has a dedicated section which allows you to fine tune the conditions when the specific interface will be considered unavailable / offline.
• Here are a few things to consider when tweaking some of the values.
  • Active monitoring where hosts are pinged is not compulsory.
  • If it is not enabled, the multi-WAN configuration will still monitor if the interface itself is up or down and act accordingly.
  • Some of the more popular hosts that people use for ping tests might limit the replies or might not even reply at all.
  • This can result in a false trigger and can also make the device not being reachable on the specific interface (e.g. to access the device through ssh or Luci).

• When you attach a device to a mesh or access point profile there is the option to select the type of Internet connection.
• If you select the Multi-WAN option, another select control will show where you can select which multi-wan profile to apply.
• Remember that the multi-wan profile and hardware has to be compatible. For instance you cant use a multi-WAN profile that has a LTE interface defined on hardware that does not have LTE capability.

• Multi-WAN Internet connections are visually distinctive on the overviews of mesh nodes and APs.

• In the following screenshot we have an Access Point with a multi-WAN profile in failover mode.
  • The WAN interface is active.
  • Traffic allocation is 100%
  • Two LTE interfaces are in the standby role.
  • They are actively monitored and thus marked in blue as on standby.
  • The WiFi interface are not actively monitored but the interface itself is up.

• Next we introduce a scenario which triggers a failover.

#We block ping packets on the host to which the access point is configured to send.
#This will trigger  a failover 
sudo iptables -A INPUT -s 197.64.14.100 -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP
#We remove the block 
#This result in a fall back.
sudo iptables -D INPUT -s 197.64.14.100 -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP

• Failover triggered

• Ping block removed and active role link is restored.