Dual WAN Setup w/ pfSense - Trying to turn TWO TERRIBLE ISPs into ONE DECENT one. 

This is totally awesome. I wish I had found your tutorial earlier. I had tried to set this up with guidance of other tutorials a while back. It was a total fail. You have offered some pretty good tips I and suggestions that has reinvigorated my interest in trying it again. Please keep making these helpful and funny videos. It's a real service to our community.

This is exactly what I was looking for. I was just getting ready to replace my 10 year old WiFi router with NanoPi R2S running IPfire when my landline went down. Got me thinking about a WAN backup. I live in Los Angeles so ‘The Big One’ earthquake is a major concern. I initially looked at cell service - until I realized that many cell towers don’t have batteries, the ones that do typically only run for 6 hours, and the ones with generators will need refueling after a week or so. Not good for a long term regional emergency. So I turned to satellite. Although Starlink serves LA, it’s at capacity and only taking reservations for service starting in ‘2023’ (would you trust Tesla to keep on schedule?). This leaves Hughesnet and Vianet, which I’m looking into. But IPfire 2.x doesn’t support dual wan and there is no timetable for 3.x, so I started looking again - and here we are. Very happy to find an open source firewall for dual Wan and this roadmap will help flatten the pfSense learning curve! Thank you! But I’ll probably need different hardware now (Nanopi R2S only has 2 ports). eBay here I come!

Great video fellow Owl, I use my PFsense in the same configuration as you for my organization.

I am so glad I found this video. I too have AT&T and Spectrum. I am having the exact same issue that you are experiencing. However, I think I’m gonna use the TP-Link instead of this software. I believe setting it up will be easy and like you, the only problem I see is the failover check being 1 minute. Thank you so much for taking the time to make these videos. A+

I agree with everyone. I have a similar problem. This is what I was looking for. Doing the same for my Starlink and T-mobile. Thank you!!

Great video

More thumbs up, all! Great videos!

Hard to believe that bandwidth in some parts of the US is so expensive, London (UK), we have 1gig fiber optic internet for around $37 per month and regular VDSL broadband for about $90 and you can get upto 100mbps depending on your distance from the telephone exchange if it you live in fiber to the home or FTTC

I suggest you look at the Peplink Balance One router with Bonding and hot failover.

Nice vid thanks

Over in Australia I've got the same problem with our largest ISP, Telstra. However they have taken to not caring at all and don't bother sending techs out to look at anything. It's only when you tell them you plan to change ISP they then offer you a discount or send out a tech the day after.

Hi, this is really a great video. With the home automation I am setting up ATM, my primary ISP who is fast but most unreliable goes down Alexa will complain s(he) can’t reach to internet. So looking for a solution to use my slow but reliable wireless based ISP as backup. Your video is really helping me to set this up. I have SG-2100, trying to convert one out of the 4 LAN port as WAN to do this. I have a question though. How does the fail back work? Do we need to manually initiate a wan link failure on the back up to go back to wan1 or primary connection?

This guide is great! I was able to get Starlink and my DSL setup as failover, and am able to send my xbox traffic to the DSL gateway. However, I can't get an open nat that way. The only way I can get an open NAT is if I set the DSL gateway as default, and disable to rule for the xbox to through that gateway. Any suggestions?

Great configuration walkthrough and explanation! Does the Netgate 1100 allow for a mobile hotspot via the USB 3.0 to be utilized as a WAN port?🤔

wouldn't it make more sense to have spectrum as primary for speed and have ATT for a fallback when spectrum goes down?

Also quite literally what I'm looking for. I have a decent Coax connection doing ~500mbps and then verizon 5g home internet providing ~400mbps, however a tiny bit more latency. Coax is unstable just the way yours is and my experience with spectrum. for $25/mo you cant beat verizon as a backup

Nice video but a quick question regarding your Firewall Rules: Why setup the LAN Allow Any rule specifying the gateway group? Doesn't the system generated default Lan Allow Any below it do the same thing through ANY Gateway on the system?

Did you do any testing with IPv6 and this setup?

Are you using Spectrum's modem? For me using my own equipment from Arris or Motorola fixed the flaky connection with Spectrum.

I'm having an issue maybe you can help with. I have 2 ISPs as well, Spectrum and a Local Fiber company. I have setup everything the way you did but I disconnect every few mins for a bout 5-10 seconds and it switches over to the alternate WAN. Is this something you experience as well? I'm only wanting to have spectrum as a failover because I use it for the live tv on their website ( you have to be on their network to get all the channels) Even when I just disable WAN2 it disconnects and comes back

used pfsense as my primary firewall for 11.5 years never had a problem for the company worked for. fun fact : it was a virtual firewall i hyper-v Source : Used more then a decade.

I enjoyed your video. I work for a mobile company it starts with t and they have a home internet that's fairly reliable and $50 a month. Which might be a better option for your failover network or maybe even your primary Network

Thanks and can be this be done with TP-Link omada?

There's no way to use both connections at once? IP that stays up on both wan and creates a IP that you can use without dropping speed ?

Get Starlink

First

Spectrum is horrible