I'm in a bit of a crisis, Wanting to setup a home network with two WAN inputs, Starlink & the current ISP. I'm not sure what hardware is needed for such a setup to allow Loadbalancing / Failover. I would love to run pfsense or openwrt as well if possible. I plan on setting up Pi-hole, Unbound & Wireguard once everything else is up and running. I've done some looking into hardware and all but I'm quite confused on what would be the best option. Some advice would be greatly appreciated.
Networking Advice, Hardware & Software.
- Thread starter InNeedOfHelp
- Start date
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You could use a quad-NIC mini PC and install pfSense with 2 WANs. You will need at least 3 NICs; 2 WANs + 1 LAN.
In pfSense routing, you can use Gateway Groups to create a prioritized list of gateways to use for failover and load balancing internet egress.
Most web apps are well-behaved when clients' IPs change, and use cookies which work from any IP. This is normal but not always the case. CG NAT shouldn't be an issue for apps that work with it today.
If your primary internet connection drops mid-session, your browser might need a reload or your teleconference call may hitch or drop, games disconnect, etc. In order to keep working, the software app itself needs to retry the connection, and upon retry the pfSense will forward the request out to the remaining gateway(s).
Because the software needs to gracefully retry, how well it'll failover depends on each app. My suggestion would be to test it and observe the effect on your most important apps.
In pfSense routing, you can use Gateway Groups to create a prioritized list of gateways to use for failover and load balancing internet egress.
Most web apps are well-behaved when clients' IPs change, and use cookies which work from any IP. This is normal but not always the case. CG NAT shouldn't be an issue for apps that work with it today.
If your primary internet connection drops mid-session, your browser might need a reload or your teleconference call may hitch or drop, games disconnect, etc. In order to keep working, the software app itself needs to retry the connection, and upon retry the pfSense will forward the request out to the remaining gateway(s).
Because the software needs to gracefully retry, how well it'll failover depends on each app. My suggestion would be to test it and observe the effect on your most important apps.