How to configure Load Balancing on Omada Gateway via Omada Controller

Contents

Objective

This article introduces how to configure the WAN Load Balancing feature on Omada gateway via Omada Controller.

Requirements

Omada Gateway series
Omada Software Controller / Hardware Controller / Cloud Based Controller

Introduction

If your network includes more than one Internet Service Provider (ISP), you can utilize Dual WAN or Multi-WAN routing. The Load Balancing feature enables data traffic to be transmitted between multiple WAN connections and allows the network administrators to customize the ratio, which can reduce network congestion and resource waste.

Configuration

For example, there are two ISPs connected on ER605 V2, ISP1 on port WAN and ISP2 on port WAN/LAN1. WAN port with a bandwidth of 1000 Mbps and WAN/LAN1 port with a bandwidth of 500 Mbps. You want to utilize the bandwidth of both links proportionally.

In this example, you can configure Load Balancing as follows:

Step 1. Log in to the Controller via web browser, go to Settings > Wired Networks > Internet > Load Balancing. In the Load Balancing Weight field, input the ratio as 2:1.

Note: In this example we consider two WAN interfaces to be Load Balancing connections, you may configure more WAN ports and their corresponding ratios to fit your needs.

It’s worth noting that the default ratio of each WAN is 1 generally. While using a USB modem for load balancing, the default ratio between the USB Modem and other WAN port is 1:10. When adding a 10G WAN port for load balancing, the default ratio between the 10G WAN port and other WAN port is 10:1. You can modify this ratio based on your actual requirements.
When using the load balancing feature with an LTE device, the default ratio between the LTE WAN and other WAN ports is 1:1. It is recommended to adjust this ratio based on your actual needs to minimize SIM card data usage.

Step 2. You can check the option Application Optimized Routing according to your requirements. Then click Apply.

Note: With Application Optimized Routing enabled, the router will consider the source IP address and destination IP address (or destination port) of the packets as a whole and record the WAN port they pass through. Then the packets with the same source IP address and destination IP address (or destination port) will be forwarded to the recorded WAN port. This feature ensures that multi- connected applications work properly. This helps avoid potential issues such as source IP changes or packet reordering that can occur due to multi-WAN traffic splitting.

Verification

Step 1. Go to Device > Details > Corresponding WAN port to check the Online Detection status of each WAN port.

The two WAN ports should both be online. Load Balancing will not take effect on WAN port detected offline.

Step 2. Then navigate to Device > Details, you may verify the counters on WAN and WAN/LAN1 interfaces for Tx and Rx packets confirm that the traffic is flowing via both WAN connections.

Note: After the router works for a while, the Total Tx/Rx Bytes ratio between the WAN ports should be close to the Load Balancing Weight ratio. But the effectiveness of this setup will only become apparent after a certain amount of traffic is running through the router. Before you verify the traffic, please allow the router to run for a period of time, like 2-3 days.

Conclusion

You have now successfully configured WAN Load Balancing on Omada Gateway.

Get to know more details of each function and configuration please go to Download Center to download the manual of your product.

FAQ

1. The speed tests doesn’t show expected results after enabling load balancing?

Re: When you use Speedtest for testing, multiple sessions are established between the server and the device. The device will perform load balancing allocation based on the number of session connections. However, the number of sessions for a single Speedtest server is limited, which may result in fewer sessions allocated to some WAN ports, and their bandwidth may not be fully utilized. Therefore, the actual speed may be lower than the sum of all WAN ports. To correctly test speed when load balancing is enabled, refer to the guide "Why cannot I get multi-wan bandwidth aggregation test effect via speedtest.net by SMB router?"