KR2 and the Ethernet Uplink Feature.....

[skslaght]

I have heard wonderful things about the KR2 but I have a few specific questions about the Ethernet Uplink feature.....

Can you tell me how the ethernet uplink functions?

Can the cellular connection be configured to kick in if there is a failure in the ethernet?

Can it be configured to take a portion of the load?

[wifi_genie]

Your standard and wireless router

The Ethernet uplink provides for the ability to connect this router to another Ethernet source such as the output of a cable or DSL modem.

Basically this router can act like the standard wifi routers we are used to.

Yes when you have an input in the Ethernet uplink port and a cellular card when the connection from either one fails it attempts to use the other connection automatically. This is called “failover” and is explained in page 38 of the attached manual. The KR2 does not do load balancing where it would share the load between the different connections.

[update 1/1/2009:- The KR2 as well as the MBR1000 now support loadbalancing. Read on to find out more ....]

[USMC_8152]

You can get this for balancing load....

If interested in both load balancing and seamless failover consider the TopGlobal MB9000 here: http://www.rfwel.com/shop/?target=pr...product_id=991 This actually supports multiple cellular data cards for added performance and redundancy

[thuor]

Kyocera KR2 now supports loadbalancing

Kyocera has a firmware version of the KR2 that supports loadbalancing just like the Cradlepoint MBR1000. This is firmware version 1.4. This has been out for a while now.

Please be sure you have the right expectations for loadbalancing. While aggregate throughput does improve this is very dependent on the specific testcase and test method. Furthermore this does not do anything for latency which is especially important for applications such as VOIP.

The release notes for the MBR1000 version states:

If two or three modems are attached, the router will use multiple connections to transfer data. If only one data connection is being used by an application (for example, a network performance test or a single video download), then only one modem will be used. But if multiple connections are being accessed (for example, a Bittorrent with multiple seeds, different simultaneous video downloads, or a simultaneous web update and email download), the traffic will be balanced among the modems.
Load balancing works well with multiple modems that have approximately the same performance. The controlling algorithm assigns new connections to modems in a round-robin fashion. If a modem is attached that is significantly slower than other attached modems, the overall performance will be limited by the slowest modem.

For true link aggregation and http bonding consider a true loadbalancing router such as the Peplink Balance product line. These have been shown to work very well when connected to multiple cellular routers. E.g Can use 2 Peplinks in bonded mode to create a fat pipe between two remote offices.