Netgear FVS336Gv2 - Dual WAN Issues
I have an ongoing issue with a Netgear FVS336Gv2 Dual WAN Router in which I am utilizing the dual-WAN ports in “Load Balance” mode and we’re losing 20% - 25% of WAN Bandwidth as a result. Several “senior” Netgear Engineers have been working on this issue for over a month now and they seem to be clueless as to what is causing the loss of bandwidth, thus I am reaching out to the EE community for any possible assistance.
As a brief overview:
WAN-1 is connected to an AMBIT Broadband Cable Mode (DOCSIS 2.0) from Time Warner Cable Business Class and has a static-IP address @ 10Mbps down, 1Mbps up. This modem has its own separate dedicated coax cable that does not service any other device. The modem is set in Bridge mode.
WAN-2 is connected to a UBEE DDW3611 DOCSIS 3.0 Wideband modem provided by Time Warner “Signature Home” and has a dynamic-IP @ 50Mbps down, 5-Mbps up. This modem has also has its own separate dedicated coax cable. The modem is set in Bridge mode.
I have this all running under Small Business Server 2011 Standard with SP1
In virtually every speed test, I get between 30Mbps to 35Mbps on WAN-2 and I test using a number of services (Speedtest.net, Speakeasy, Time-Warner Servers, etc.) On a few very rare occasions, we have hit 40Mbps, but that has only happened 2 or 3 times in the past month.
We have tried every possible conceivable configuration including:
Disabling “load balancing” and using WAN-2 only for HTTP
Disabling “load balancing” and using WAN-1 only for HTTP (and swapping cable modems between ports)
Resetting the Netgear back to default Manufacturers settings (thereby losing all our Firewall security settings, port-forwarding, rules, etc. etc. - later restored with backed-up .cfg file) -- it does not help.
Nothing seems to help. As soon as we remove the Netgear FVS225Gv2 from the equation and I connect directly to the Ubee modem (in bridge mode, NAT mode – it does not matter) we get the full 50+X5 every time (usually around 52-53Mbps). Thus, the Netgear router seems to be the problem here. The specs indicate that the LAN-to-WAN throughput is limited to 60 Mbps total – thus, are we hitting upon that hardware threshold? This is sold as a “Dual Gigabit WAN Router” – that’s just not true.
I am wondering if something like a CISCO RV042 would help? It says that you can get 200Mbps on the dual WAN ports with that model, but unfortunately, the LAN ports are only 10 / 100 and we need 1000’s on the LAN.
Without spending a small fortune, does anyone know of a decent Dual-WAN Gigabit router that can handle over 60Mbps in Load Balancing mode? Or, is there any known "fixes" for our existing Netgear FVS336Gv2?
Thanks for any assistance!
As a brief overview:
WAN-1 is connected to an AMBIT Broadband Cable Mode (DOCSIS 2.0) from Time Warner Cable Business Class and has a static-IP address @ 10Mbps down, 1Mbps up. This modem has its own separate dedicated coax cable that does not service any other device. The modem is set in Bridge mode.
WAN-2 is connected to a UBEE DDW3611 DOCSIS 3.0 Wideband modem provided by Time Warner “Signature Home” and has a dynamic-IP @ 50Mbps down, 5-Mbps up. This modem has also has its own separate dedicated coax cable. The modem is set in Bridge mode.
The Netgear FVS336Gv2 has the most recent firmware (beta ver. 3.0.7-49)
WAN Mode is set to “Load Balancing”
WAN-2 Protocol Bindings has HTTP “enabled” as I want to take advantage of the 50Mbps down speeds for all Web Traffic. Everything else, - Exchange Server Email, Static FTP, etc. goes through WAN-1 in order to use my static IP address for such services
I have this all running under Small Business Server 2011 Standard with SP1
In virtually every speed test, I get between 30Mbps to 35Mbps on WAN-2 and I test using a number of services (Speedtest.net, Speakeasy, Time-Warner Servers, etc.) On a few very rare occasions, we have hit 40Mbps, but that has only happened 2 or 3 times in the past month.
We have tried every possible conceivable configuration including:
Disabling “load balancing” and using WAN-2 only for HTTP
Disabling “load balancing” and using WAN-1 only for HTTP (and swapping cable modems between ports)
Resetting the Netgear back to default Manufacturers settings (thereby losing all our Firewall security settings, port-forwarding, rules, etc. etc. - later restored with backed-up .cfg file) -- it does not help.
Nothing seems to help. As soon as we remove the Netgear FVS225Gv2 from the equation and I connect directly to the Ubee modem (in bridge mode, NAT mode – it does not matter) we get the full 50+X5 every time (usually around 52-53Mbps). Thus, the Netgear router seems to be the problem here. The specs indicate that the LAN-to-WAN throughput is limited to 60 Mbps total – thus, are we hitting upon that hardware threshold? This is sold as a “Dual Gigabit WAN Router” – that’s just not true.
I am wondering if something like a CISCO RV042 would help? It says that you can get 200Mbps on the dual WAN ports with that model, but unfortunately, the LAN ports are only 10 / 100 and we need 1000’s on the LAN.
Without spending a small fortune, does anyone know of a decent Dual-WAN Gigabit router that can handle over 60Mbps in Load Balancing mode? Or, is there any known "fixes" for our existing Netgear FVS336Gv2?
Thanks for any assistance!
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ASKER
I've requested that this question be closed as follows:
Accepted answer: 0 points for BAmiller's comment http:/Q_27398432.html#36973854
for the following reason:
Thanks for the input.
Accepted answer: 0 points for BAmiller's comment http:/Q_27398432.html#36973854
for the following reason:
Thanks for the input.
ASKER
I inadvertently accepted my own comment! This award needs to go to Cliff!
Sorry about that!
Brian
Sorry about that!
Brian
ASKER
Thanks, Cliff!
ASKER
I did try tweaking the MTU settings (tried it both at the router, then at the NIC's; and like you said, it only resulted in nominal improvements). I knew that there was "overhead" involved in the connection (provisioning, line noise, etc.) and that I would never get the full combined speeds (never expected that) -- but I was hoping for something over 40Mbps consistently. I will explore the link balancing appliances as I was not familiar with those. However, since this is a small home-office (less than 10 user setup) - we may just ditch the two WAN setup and use just the 50X5 in dynamic mode and then configure the SBS 2011 Server to use a service like dyn.com which allows us to configure Exchange Server with a dynamic IP.
We really LOVE the 50X5 bandwidth and we hate to lose that -- even though we can only achieve that full speed by ditching the Netgear and using the Ubee on its own (and btw, the Ubee modem really sucks -- we wanted a Motorola SBG6580 but Time Warner would not allow it) - but it still gets the job done.
Thanks for your input -- I'll wait to see if a few more responses come in and then I'll award points accordingly.
Best regards!