Question

Earlier this year I bought a RUT950, mainly for use in a remote caravan. However, with lockdowns and home working, I'm trying to use the RUT950 as Failover for my Virgin Media main cable internet connection.

It all looked straightforward but the problem I have is getting the Draytek WAN2 port and the RUT950 WAN port interacting in such a way that the one can monitor the other. Nowhere can I see any clear description of how the two connected WAN ports should be setup to achieve this (each can Static, DHCP or whatever??)

Frankly I'm out of my depth and any help would be appreciated

Answer 1

Hello,

Regarding the issue that you are having. As what i understand you want to configure RUT950 as the main internet provider to your Draytek 2925 router. So you need to connect it this way. Connect the Virgin Media ethernet cable to RUT950 WAN port then from RUT950 LAN 1 connect it to Draytek 2925  WAN port.

Virgin Media Cable ------> RUT950 (WAN) -------> RUT950(LAN1) ------> Draytek 2925 (WAN)

Also configure the LAN IP of RUT950 to be different from your Draytek 2925 Router example 192.168.1.X is on the Draytek Router you need to put 192.168.10.X ip on RUT950. Any other IP range as long as not 192.168.2.1 because this on is used for the hotspot feature of RUT950.

Correct me if i am wrong.

If you face any issue's doing this let me know :)

Hope it helps.

Regards,

Jerome

Comments

But what you suggest seems to make the RUT950 (with only 100mbps ethernet) the primary router. I don't want to change anything on my current setup other than have WAN2 on my Draytek in failover mode to the RUT950 i.e.

Virgin Media Cable ------>WAN1 - Draytek 2925 - WAN2<------- WAN - RUT950  <------- 4G

With my LAN all connected to the Draytek high speed ethernet as usual.

What I have now done is set the RUT950 WAN to:

192.168.99.162 /255.255.255.0

Gateway 192.168.99.254

Broadcast 192.168.99.255

Changed the Draytek WAN2 to fixed IP:

192.168.99.160/255.255.255.0

Gateway 192.168.99.254

I am now getting the required WAN: [Wired] IN USEWAN Failover: [Mobile] READY

But there is still something not right!! The system is not stable and the Topology wrongly shows no internet from WAN1

So, I'm getting closer but it's far from what I first thought where the Draytek and RUT950 would work seamlessly together once Failover was selected on each unit.

If there are any more suggestions from those that have cracked this problem I would be very grateful.

Chip

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Hello,

So you should do it like this:

Virgin Media Cable ------>WAN1 - Draytek 2925 - WAN2<-------LAN - RUT950  <------- 4G

Regards,
Jerome

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Thanks again Jerome

My mistake was thinking that I had to connect the RUT950 WAN to the Draytek WAN2. Connecting to the RUT950 LAN, as you suggest, means the Draytek WAN2 can revert back to default "Obtain an IP address automatically", as I had originally expected, and now uses the RUT950 LAN DHCP.

It's all making more sense now and it's much more stable, except that I still cannot make sense of the Topology diagram on the RUT950, which wrongly indicates that the main WAN is down and no internet on the Draytek side.

I'm unable to do any more stress testing on the system right now because my daughter is working from home in the next room - the reason I wanted to achieve 100% internet connectivity.

Jerome, you've been a great help. I feel that I've still got a bit more tweaking to do (or undo??) but I'm much closer to where I want to be.

Cheers

Chip

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Hello,

For the Draytek part we cannot provide support. But i guess it is showing that WAN2 is down because you are currently working on WAN1. I think it is best to test the scenario by removing WAN1 on Draytek router and check if it will automatically use WAN2.  I am not sure though about the Draytek part. Anyways it's worth a try :)

Thank you and have a nice day!

Regards,
Jerome

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Yes, that's exactly what I intend to do - but only when my daughter is relaxing and off duty. I'm trying to prevent nervous breakdowns, not create them :-)

Cheers

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For the benefit of anyone else who may run into the above problem, this is how I eventually resolved it.

Originally, I made the following two mistakes, which caused all sorts of problems

1. Connecting the RUT950 WAN to the Draytek 2925 WAN2

2. Setting Failover on both the Draytek and the RUT950

My working solution is as follows: I'm currently only using one SIM on the RUT950 and this is set up as Mobile(WAN)

Virgin Media Cable ------>WAN1 - Draytek 2925 - WAN2<------- LAN - RUT950  <------- 4G

The RUT950 connects to the Draytek WAN2 port via one LAN port, and a second RUT950 LAN port connects to my LAN, with a compatible alias, to enable monitoring and setup.

The Draytek WAN2 port is set with the following specific IP address

192.168.1.160/255.255.255.0 Gateway 192.168.1.1 so it can be seen by the RUT950 and use it as gateway.

Only the Draytek is setup in Failover mode, when WAN1 is off-line. With this configuration, the Draytek seems to only activate the WAN2 port when WAN1 is down.

I've had only limited opportunity to stress test this setup, so far but it looks promising

Chip