Peplink Pepwave Max review

Peplink's new Pepwave Max takes the concept of WAN load balancing to a new level. It can handle up to six different connection technologies, which allows you to use a range of internet connections primarily for mobile applications and spread them across different service providers for greater link fault tolerance.

Along with a four-port Fast Ethernet switch, you have an Ethernet WAN port, an internal 802.11b/g wireless AP plus wireless client, and the unit comes with two magnetic extender aerials. For other mobile comms devices there are two USB ports, plus PC Card and ExpressCard slots, that can be used simultaneously. The Max supports most popular 3G modems, and Peplink's engineers will provide online help to get unrecognised models working.

The Max is built to handle extreme conditions and includes integral surge protection. Optional brackets stop cards coming loose from the front slots and the chassis includes a 9V-30V terminal block so it can be used in cars, boats, trains and more.

For testing we dropped the appliance between our firewall and LAN. The Max has its own SPI firewall, but make sure you create some inbound rules as it defaults to letting all traffic through. The web interface is easy to use and opens with a dashboard showing all available and active WAN links. These are arranged in priorities, so top priority links will be active and any in a lower priority will be used as standby links.

A smart feature is the ability to pick up a link icon and drag and drop it in different positions in the dashboard. All links in the highest priority section immediately become active and load balance with each other.

We connected the Max's internal client to our wireless firewall, although we found that 802.11n operations had to be stopped before the Max could see it. Dragging this link into the top priority group activated it immediately and load balancing with the wired WAN port commenced.

For outbound traffic you have three load balancing options, with the default policy routing traffic from a source to a specific destination through the same WAN link. For greater compatibility you can use the policy that forces a LAN device always to use the same WAN link.

Custom policy rules offer six different load balancing algorithms for selected services, including least used, lowest latency and source or destination connection persistence. Select the weighted balance algorithm and you get slider bars for each of the six WAN ports where you can fine tune load balancing.

To test failover we put both the WAN port and wireless client in the highest priority group. We started pinging an internet address from a LAN system and then pulled the cable from the WAN port. The ping timed out twice and then continued unabated.

The Pepwave Max proved easy to use, especially as load balancing can be fully automated. It provides a unique set of mobile comms and load balancing features, and is well suited to be outside and on the move.

Author: Dave Mitchell