Sticky Sessions on a RV340 Multi-Wan with Load Balancing Enabled

[lolux]

Does the RV340 support sticky/persistent sessions while load balancing over multiple WANs (i.e., once a session is initiated at a web site, the router keeps the connection on the same WAN that sent the initial request)?

My small business is using an RV340 with multi-wan+load balancing enabled (2 ISPs/WANs, precedence = 1,1).

In this configuration sessions do not persist at many sites where uses log in such as at a financial websites. For instance, upon enabling load balancing, users on our network could no longer log in to our bank's web site due to the changing IP addresses violating the security rules of that site.

Forcing all HTTPS connections to use a particular WAN via Policy-Based Routing is a partial fix/workaround; but it is not a true solution since it largely removes the benefit of load balancing (esp. since nearly all cloud-based services run over TLS nowadays). Is there an alternative?

Other multi-wan routers provide this feature (e.g., UTT routers). Am I missing the way that the RV340 facilitates this?

[lolux]

I have found a preliminary answer to my sticky sessions question:

• The RV340 uses MWAN3 for load balancing, and MWAN3 supports sticky sessions.
• According to the MWAN3 manual, load balancing without stickiness enabled can cause problems with HTTPS/TLS sessions:
  • "Mwan3 version 1.6 has sticky and ipset support. Stickiness lets you route new session over the same wan interface as the previous session, as long as the time between the new and the previous session is shorter then the timeout value (default 600s). This can solve some problems with https sites, which don't allow a new source address within the same cookie/https session." (See subsection "Stickiness and ipset")
• The RV340's admin GUI does not currently provide access to MWAN3's stickiness option.

Cisco team, may I request that access to MWAN3's stickiness feature be added to the RV340's GUI?

[lolux · Accepted solution]

After two months worth of running the RV340 in a production environment (~15 to 20 active users), investigating options, testing alternatives, and continuing to experience several firmware bugs and hardware problems (which is perhaps uncharacteristic for Cisco products), I have concluded the following:

1. It is not possible to achieve sticky sessions on the current version of the RV340 firmware. 
2. The RV340 is not quite ready for production.

I have switched to UTT multi-WAN routers, which do provide sticky sessions (see the "identity binding" feature on the load balancing menu). I have installed and configured both the AC750GW and the AC1220GW models with multiple WAN connections in load-balanced mode and can attest to their solid performance vis-a-vis the buggy performance of the RV340 configured similarly.

Cisco team, if you're listening, the lack of the sticky sessions feature is a singular disappointment for those of us who are seeking a load-balanced, multi-wan router for use in a small- to-medium business office context.