Duolinks SW24 2PORT Dual Wan Load Balancing Router

It's hard to find a load balancing router for a smaller business that is simple and easy to integrate into the network, provides security and the necessary backup connectivity that is beneficial to a business without breaking the bank. Recently, we purchased the Duolinks SW24 2PORT Dual Wan Load Balancing Router for less than $140. It was promptly delivered and easy to setup right out of the box. We didn't have to call in a "pro" to integrate the unit into our network. Basically, over 95% of the work our business processes require internet connectivity through portals and websites. We need a solid router that provides security as well as uninterrupted internet connectivity. This router does the job. We're using it with cable and DSL. The unit easily balances our traffic across these connections. During the few months it has been in service, at least one of the connections has had trouble or failed but with the router in place, it was a seamless blip that did not impact our business. The unit "failed over" to the active connection without interrupting the network. The router is easily configured through a browser interface and has many different functions we are still learning and utilizing. It provides a good firewall for security as well as the ability to block inappropriate traffic. We're extremely happy with our choice and look forward to learning more about the router and its capabilities. All this makes it extremely affordable for the home or small to medium business that doesn't need the complicated Cisco routers and the highly paid contractors needed to install and maintain them.

I bought this router for our small office... we depend heavily on reliable internet connectivity, and have incoming cable (primary, DHCP) and DSL (backup, PPPoE) connections.Setup was fairly straightforward (I'm no networking expert, but have set up 8 or 10 other routers), and we were up and running in under an hour. I didn't use load balancing, because our cable is much, much faster than the DSL... we'd rather just use that whenever it's available, and failover to the DSL only when the cable goes down. The SW24 seemed to handle link "health checks" and automatic failover just fine.Where we had problems though was on more mundane NAT routing functionality. We had frequent dropped SSL connections and browsing failures (IE "cannot load the page"). Invariably, these were momentary failures, and a browser refresh (or re-logging in to secure sites) would immediately succeed... but when it happens on an hourly basis to multiple users, it's just not tolerable. Syswan tech support was responsive and helpful, and we determined that it was most likely related to a DNS caching problem in the SW24. Passing internet DSN servers (openDNS or Level3) to our DHCP clients (instead of just giving them the router's 192.168.1.1 address as the only DNS server) reduced the frequency of dropped connections, but didn't solve the problem.Tech support suggested a new/beta firmware that allows the router's internal DNS caching to be disabled. This firmware was supposed to be emailed to me, but wasn't, and I decided I was tired of messing with it. So after fooling with this router and tolerating unstable internet connectivity for several weeks, I gave up, returned the SW24, and bought a Peplink 20L. Peplink just worked straight out of the box... much happier with it.Obviously others have had better luck with this router, but for whatever reason, it didn't work reliably in our situation.

I am an avid flight sim guy and frequently upload my flights to YouTube. The following is a reply to Marshall regarding his upload practices. [...]Marshall,As always, I greatly enjoy your flights and commentary… I miss the unique NewYouwk camaraderie I enjoyed during the eleven years my wife and I lived on the West side…across the street from the Dakota and later at 326 W 48th…don't ask…ok, you can , with my YouTube prefix and @gmail.com….grin… andTo you, and by now, your 1200 plus subscribers, I submit the following for comment.I wondered, since your terrific vids tend to go lengthy, how do you manage during your video upload time? What is your;1. Upload speed, and;2. Video capture tool , and3. Your editing /compilation/output tool?With my rig, I7-6700K/GTX 1080 MSI Killer Ethernet MOBO, uploading anything of significant length takes a piss-offable amount of time. I;1. record with Shadowplay,2. edit/output via MovieMaker's standard 1920x1080 savea to PC option, then;3. drag and drop to Chrome's YouTube upload page.Though MovieMaker, gives me pretty nice ~50% reduction over the already outstanding Shadowplay file size, my Time Warner (17 Mb down, 1Mb upload speed) , upload of Two hours of video , can take upwards of 14 hours.Believe me, I have tried virtually ALL paid and free Vid capture tools, and nothing has given me the frame-rate friendliness/quality/file size combo of Shadowplay.I say Piss-offable because during upload, I experience a huge loss of internet download quality / speed. I have read this loss is due to the necessary handshaking with YouTube thus making at least Downloads or Video streaming viewing during this upload time, totally suck-worthy.Therefore, I try to minimize the suck time by uploading during sleeping hours. Nonetheless, I don't sleep 14-18 hours, so I still have to contend with 4-8 hours of internet s***y-time. What am I doing wrong?I do have;1. a Windstream DSL 3/1.5 Mb dl/up backup, and;2. a LAN connected multimedia laptop in the home theater(Living room), and;3. a load balancing SysWan SW24 2 WAN port router to plaza and y with and;4. plenty of time.I was thinking that I could;1. compile the Moviemaker output on my faster flying machine, then;2. transfer the file via LAN to my multimedia laptop, then;3. upload FROM MY LAPTOP through my DSL connection to YouTube... thus;4. AUTOmagically switching, based on IP address, via my SW24, my Flying/editing machine to the freed-Up TW 17/1 connection for other multi media events and downloads and goodies......at least that's the theory...with no tech support and sketchy documentation, the Sw24 setup is a non-trivial issue.N.B.I am now experimenting, with the last several vids, my recent discovery of Moviemaker’s Vimeo 1920 x 1080 option. It gives me;1. Two-thirds(66%) reduction in output file size over the standard “save to PC” option, and ;2. correspondingly 66% reduction in upload time to YouTube.3. The downside is rare-occasional video schmutz, but;4. The upside, is a huge increase of download_speed/quality_of_video_stream_watching-during_waking_hours time-……even if the SW24 experiment is a bust.Sending healing vibes to your back.Chas