• 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 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 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 selection.

• A functional multi-WAN profile consists of the following:
  • A name, which can be thought of as a kind of folder, 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 that are used for WAN access.

• There are two gentle reminders with instructions on how to make the multi-WAN profile usable.
• The first reminds you that you need to add at least one interface.

• The second reminds you to apply a policy after you have added an interface to the Multi-WAN profile.

• Each Multi-WAN profile has an associated policy.
• Here you define the mode of the multi-WAN profile and the weighting of the individual interfaces as well as the role in the event of failover mode.

• Once you have applied the policy, the multi-WAN profile is ready for use.
• Next, we will look at the settings that are triggered when an interface is marked as down or up.

• For each interface you define, there is a separate area where you can specify the conditions under which the respective interface is considered unavailable / offline.
• Here are some things to keep in mind when customising some values.
  • Active monitoring, where the hosts are pinged, is not mandatory
  • If it is not enabled, the multi-WAN configuration will still monitor whether the interface itself is available or unavailable and act accordingly.
  • Some of the more popular hosts used for ping testing may limit the number of responses or not respond at all.
  • This can lead to a false trigger and also to the device being unreachable on the specific interface (e.g. for accessing the device via ssh or Luci).

• When you connect a device to a Mesh or Access Point profile, you have the option of selecting the type of Internet connection.
• If you select the Multi-WAN option, a further selection field is displayed in which you can select which Multi-WAN profile you want to apply.
• Remember that the Multi-WAN profile and the hardware must be compatible. For example, you cannot use a Multi-WAN profile with an LTE interface on hardware that is not LTE-capable.

• Multi-WAN Internet connections are visually recognisable in the overviews of the 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.
  • The traffic allocation is 100%
  • Two LTE interfaces are in the standby role.
  • They are actively monitored and are therefore marked in blue as being in standby mode.
  • The WiFi interface is not actively monitored but the interface itself is up.

• Next, we introduce a scenario that triggers a failover.

#We block ping packets from being sent on the host to which the access point is configured.
#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 leads to a fallback.
sudo iptables -D INPUT -s 197.64.14.100 -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP

• Failover triggered

• Ping block is removed and the active role connection is restored.