Firewalla: Multi-WAN for network availability Newsletter - Jan 18, 2023

Firewalla Multi-WAN

Have you ever wondered how you can ensure that your WAN connection is always stable and fast? Firewalla's Multi-WAN feature can help you if:

• Your primary internet is unstable and needs a backup Internet connection.
• Your primary internet is slow and needs another line for bandwidth and redundancy.

Multi-WAN helps you manage a maximum of two WAN connections at once. 

Configuring Multi-WAN

Multi-WAN configuration only becomes available when more than one WAN network is enabled and your box is running in Router Mode. To create a new WAN connection:

1. Tap on Network Manager
2. Tap on Edit -> Create Network
3. Select WAN Connection
4. Tap the Ethernet Port or the Wi-Fi interface you'd like to create the WAN connection on, then save your configuration.

If you're setting up multi-WAN on a Firewalla Gold using your LAN ports, your configuration may look something like this:

The Firewalla Wi-Fi SD can be used in conjunction with Firewalla Gold products so you can back up your network with Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi SD can also work as a temporary Wi-Fi LAN segment if needed. Read more about how to configure and use the Firewalla Wi-Fi SD.

And if you're setting up multi-WAN on a Firewalla Purple using its Wi-Fi interface, your configuration may look something like this:

Multi-WAN Modes

After you create a secondary WAN, you can configure how multiple connections handle Internet traffic under Network Manager -> Multi-WAN Setting. There are two modes:

• Failover – Only one WAN connection is active at any time. If the primary WAN fails, your network will switch to the secondary WAN. This mode is intended to ensure that your Internet is available at all times.
• Load Balance – Traffic is spread across multiple networks, preventing any one network from being overloaded. This mode is ideal if you have slow and unstable Internet.

Policy-Based Routing

If you want to make sure certain types of traffic always go to a certain WAN connection, you can create a route. With routes, you can choose whether traffic gets dropped or goes through your backup when your primary WAN is down.

For example, if you are using your mobile hotspot as your backup WAN on Purple but you don't want video traffic to kill your data plan, you can create Routes to send all video traffic to the primary WAN connection and set the Route Preference to Static. Read more about Policy-Based Routing.

This is part of our Firewalla Weekly Newsletter. You can sign up here https://firewalla.com/weekly. You can read the full article here: Firewalla Feature Guide: Multi-WAN​.