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WAN Load Balancing and Failover on UniFi Gateways

Ensuring a stable internet connection is crucial, and UniFi Gateways offer both WAN Failover and WAN Load Balancing to keep your network running smoothly. These features help prevent downtime by either switching to a backup connection or distributing traffic across multiple connections.

WAN Failover

WAN Failover allows you to connect a secondary internet connection to your UniFi Gateway as a backup. If the primary internet service goes down, the system automatically switches to the secondary connection, minimizing disruptions. Once the primary connection is restored, the system switches back.

Starting with UniFi Network 9.1, UniFi Gateways now support several WAN connections (up to one less than the total number of ports on the gateway). This allows users to establish multiple internet connections and configure a hierarchy of WAN failovers.

Additionally, the UniFi LTE Backup can serve as an additional failover option. It connects via a LAN port rather than a dedicated WAN port, meaning it could connect downstream of your gateway. This allows you to install the LTE Backup wherever your signal is strongest, even if that is physically far from the location of your Gateway. For more information on setting up a ULTE Backup, click here.

Troubleshooting WAN Failover

UniFi Gateways continuously monitor your internet connection using three checks: pinging the Internet Verification server and testing DNS resolution with your WAN’s two configured DNS servers. If two of these checks fail, WAN failover is triggered. While this system helps detect outages, it may occasionally misidentify downtime, resulting in false failovers.

UniFi Gateways monitor your internet connection by pinging your DNS server, which by default is set to your ISP’s, to detect outages. If the gateway cannot make contact with the server, it will assume an interruption has occurred. This may occasionally result in an incorrect diagnosis of WAN downtime.

If your ISP is causing connectivity issues with its DNS, switching to a different DNS server, such as Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8) can improve accuracy.

Your UniFi Gateway determines failover by using ping detection and DNS checks to ensure a stable internet connection. You can configure the domains and DNS servers used for this process.

To configure your DNS server:

  1. In Site Manager, go to Network Settings > Internet and click on your WAN.
  2. Scroll to the IPv4 section, find DNS Server and uncheck Auto.
  3. Enter a new Primary and Secondary DNS server.

To configure your Internet Verification Server & DNS Verification:

  1. In Site Manager, go to Network > UniFi Devices and click on your Gateway to open its device panel.
  2. Click the Settings tab.
  3. Adjust the Internet Verification Server and DNS Verification.

WAN Load Balancing

WAN Load Balancing, unlike failover, utilizes multiple internet connections simultaneously to improve network performance and redundancy. Instead of only activating a secondary connection when the primary fails, this feature distributes traffic between both WAN connections.

This feature is available on UniFi Gateways starting with UXG Pro Firmware version 1.13 and UniFi Console version 2.5 (for devices like UDMP, UDM SE, and other dual-WAN supported consoles).

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