RV042G - Dual Wan - Lost Connections

[bobb crosbie]

Hi,

I'm having a problem with Dual-Wan load balancing on the GV042G.

We have 2 DSL connections and would like to load balance traffic between them, however we keep having problems with lost connections.

This seems particularly noticeable with things like SSH.  The connection seems to work fine initially, however if they are left idle for 5-10 minutes, then the connection is often hung when you return to it.

I can understand such problems with udp, or indeed, http which is stateless, where multiple GET requests could be sent out different links because they are all separate TCP connections.

However, I don't understand the behaviour with SSH.  It is one, single, stateful TCP connection. Surely, once a connection is open, then all packets which are part of that connection should be sent out the same wan link?

If I create 2 protocol bindings, such as:

    All http(s) traffic  -->   Wan-1

    All other traffic  -->  Wan-2

Then things seem to work ok.  But that doesn't seem like load-balancing to me.

Am I doing something wrong?  Should the RV042G load balance persistent connections properly?

Running Latest Firmware:  v4.2.2.08  - 2013.04.26

Many Thanks,

- bobb

Message was edited by: bobb crosbie  -  Added Firmware Version

[vvijaysa]

Hello Bobb,

Thank you for using Cisco Support Forums. I suggest enabling the Network Service Detection option under Dual-WAN management page and changing the Retry timeout to  a few seconds and Retry count to 5-10. For further details on Dual-WAN management and how to configure the above options, please refer to the article below:

Set Up Dual WAN Connections on RV042, RV042G and RV082 VPN Routers

Thanks,

Vijay S. Venkitachalam

[chrebert]

Hello Bobb,

What you have observed as far as the secure traffic goes is normal.

Any kind of secure connection gets broken if you suddenly start sending data from a different IP address, so HTTPS should be bound to one interface, like you have done.  I am not so sure about SSH, but if it doesn't work I'd say try it with a binding since it is also encrypted communication.

When you are using load balancing you can disable the failure detection method, it is really only meant to be used for the Failover Mode.  I have seen it cause odd issues with load balancing where it disables a link for no reason.   Try just turning the detection methods off on both WAN interfaces.

Let me know how that goes.

Christopher Ebert

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Network Support Engineer - Cisco Small Business Support Center

[SamirD]

What you can do is create two protocol binding entries, one for each wan.  This way, either wan will be used, but will remain with that wan until the session terminates.

SSH connections monitor the incoming IP address and drop the connection when the IP address changes, so simultaneous use of both wans isn't possible.

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