Question Are you using Pepwave SpeedFusion?

[Neal]

@redbaron I'm struggling to understand this. From what I can find FusionHub Solo is for one Peplink device. What if you have two Pepwaves such as me?

I also don't understand the bonding. Let's say as I have AT&T and Verizon, one may be and usually is better than the other. How does the weak player play into the equation and help in any way over a connection to the strongest source?

It seems you need some type of virtualization to install this so it must be a self-contained OS? Not sure if I could install this straight onto a Windows server without the need for Hyper-V, which I have but prefer not dividing up existing server resources, or Ubuntu server I also have.

With a single pepwave with one radio per pepwave, I'm trying to figure out how this works. I assume it's going to bond WAN connections so any WAN you can add to the mix will "bond" but again, just curious how this benefits my speed over the strongest WAN provider.

If a license is required, where do you get it? Even if free? Is this restricted to one Pepwave?

I believe there are different terms at play here. SpeedFusion and FusionHub?

Edit: reading the docs, I see VirtualBox would be an option which I've used before.

 

[redbaron]

Some random answers, while I am still learning:

* WAN connections are bonded. A weak player is ignored, as the packet is going to use the stronger path. This is per packet, which is genius.

WIth Per packet transmission, you can have a stream utilizing every connection you have, which is stiched together by the endpoints, being your Peplink and the Fusion on the other end. They don't care how they arrive, and they ensure the packets do arrive and in order.

This is very similar to how torrent works, with the exception of packet order being guaranteed.

All packets are sent utilizing an ensured delivery protocol, similar to TCP, and different than UDP. This means even UDP packets are guaranteed to transmit between endpoints, which is not typical. Allowing UDP packets to split paths is a unique feature of speedfusion.

I have TMobile, with 140MB bandwidth. Without speedfusion, my streaming is limited to 480P. With speedfusion, I get 4K streaming without glitch, and utilizing only TMobile.

* This is a VPN, which changes your source IP address.

* Another benefit -- I can switch my source to be Canada, and get different TV Shows on Netflix than when in the US.

By adding AT&T to my peplink, located in a MR5200 Hotspot and connected via 1Gbs Ethernet to the WAN port of my Peplink BR1 Pro 5G, I have 2 providers of 5G that are bonded in the single tunnel.

While driving, TMobile may go out or AT&T may go out, but my connection stays on as long as one of these providers is operational.

* Speeds vary as the providers speeds vary.

* When at the campground, I add a 3rd source of internet, the campground Wifi as Wan. That connection is added to the bond, increasing available bandwidth.

* I have observed the following speed. TMobile - 140Mb/s, AT&T 87Mb/s, Campground 12Mb/s. My client speed test shows 212Mb/s, and fast.com shows 212Mb/s.

****NOTE ON SPEEDTEST***
A new understanding of why speedtest.com vs fast.com show such different numbers. Many providers implement streaming savers, which reduce speed when streaming videos.

Speedtest.com acts like a web browser, downloading files or images.
Fast.com acts like Netflix -- streaming video.

Comparing these two is essential if you want to know what kind of network management is being implemented, as the first stage is limiting streaming.

With speedfusion, they 2 should report very close to identical.

Without speedfusion, I was getting 4.5Mbs from fast.com on T-Mobile, and 140Mb/s from speedtest.net. That shows how much limitation T-Mobile was doing on my connections.

**Regarding requirements:
You want a hosted server. I have VMWare farms throughout the US, so its easy for me. For the vast majority of you (everyone except @Neal ), You would need to order a server preconfigured. This would cost you $5.00/month.

I will post a few howto's and details once I research this more.

To get the license, you have to go to Incontrol, and add a license. It is free, but limited to 1 connection per server. I have 10 Fusion servers spaced in major cities. The thought process is I would connect to the city geographically closest to me, as that will reduce latency. There is no charge for this, but only 1 peer can connect at a time.

So what if you have 2 Peplinks?

The answer is -- setup 2 servers, or stack your peplinks. Have the 2nd one feed your primary via the ethernet WAN, and show up as an additional provider.

That is all I have so far, still doing a lot of work to understand. Feel free to ask more.

 

[Neal]

I read the docs and it makes more sense. I'll likely set it up and give it a try for my trip starting July 1st. You'll obviously have to maintain an InControl subscription where our 1st year is free. Looks like that's cheap at around $30/year if I read correctly at 5Gstore.com.

 

[Neal]

FusionHub is installed on the server. FYI it required a Firmware update, odd as I just downloaded it! So if you haven't checked your Hub for firmware updates you may want to do so from the System menu.

Need to check a few more things such as firewall config as mine is behind my firewall. Then learn to setup the Pepwaves.

Thanks for the nudge to learn this and for another day's loss on what I was supposed to be doing

Edit: Firmware update never completes. Not sure what's going on there.

 

[CaptainGizmo]

One more simple quick note about Bonding, @Neal and @redbaron …

It also provides redundancy which, for critical data transfer, is where it’s true value come into play.

And let lest we not forget Carrier Aggregation! New topic.

 

[Neal]

@redbaron I'm just about setup on both endpoints, I used the dynamic bonding as it says that's more for cellular. May have to compare configs someday but I won't really be able to test this until I hit the road but will head to the RV in the next week or so and do some tests.

 

[Neal]

This is way cool! I'm all setup via InControl and from the video below learned about some tests you can do. Peplink has done an amazing job with this stuff. Absolutely loving these Pepwaves! Thanks again @redbaron, I've avoided this as I typically don't need a VPN for my work and wonder if it's going to yield slower speeds in the end. That is still to be determined but Peplink has some nice tools to test.

 

[Neal]

I am concerned the speed hit this may take. Will be interested testing when I hit the road.

 

[redbaron]

I am using dynamic right now myself.

I am seeing a very stable connection with carrier aggregation.

@Neal - regarding firmware. I had to reboot the VM and then reapply the firmware update from Incontrol. It finally updated after a few minutes.

 

[Neal]

First - that's awesome, glad you have everything all setup and can enjoy your coach and all the tech.

While off topic for this thread what you describe is a failure by Newmar or a PDI failure. As a software developer (me) if I write an app that requires peers to help someone figure out the software, fix something I didn't do properly, etc. etc. then I failed.

Any customer of a coach should be able to use everything that comes with it without assistance. There should be guides on how to configure anything/everything in the coach without having to call Newmar, your dealer, or peers. Today's method of training is YouTube, the old day were paper guides. This is where Newmar and/or dealers need to capitalize on feedback such as above, that should be communicated to them, and address with proper training (YouTube videos) to help others. While you're all set, how many other owners are not using the full potential of their coach? You and others please provide feedback so when the next person purchases their dream machine, they can enjoy it too. It may and likely will fall on deaf ears, but we all have to try.

Wait for the invoice, it's all great now, don't open the mail! @redbaron ain't cheap

Edit: Maybe @redbaron could consider making YouTube videos to help others like he did with yours

 

[lemondrop9344]

I am concerned the speed hit this may take. Will be interested testing when I hit the road.

Neal,
As a FYI........
I have been performing a Synology NAS server backup (incremental) from our home office to the Synology NAS on my RV for over a year using SpeedFusion with PEP VPN.
First off, I think the Synology NAS backup apps do a pretty good job of compressing the files to be backed up & secondly, Speed Fusion does a good job of getting the files from one NAS to the other. While the initial backup took some time (an hour or so), the incremental backups rarely take more than a minute.
Granted, there are a lot of things in play that would/could impact the time it takes for the backup to happen, but from my perspective, transfer speeds were more than acceptable.

 

[Neal]

It's going to be interesting to test and Peplink has great tools per the video I posted to be able to disable select WAN connections to see how speeds are on each WAN. Do I sacrifice a 90-150 down single WAN for a 30 down bonded WAN via Speedfusion? My speed tests via InControl are showing about 20-30 down which are quite slow from what I've seen. I won't know more until I'm in the coach and testing over time. There may be a hit by the InControl remote connection too. By the way, InControl is seriously cool and very well done. I haven't really used it in the past but I will likely renew going forward and maintain it.

 

[redbaron]

I have discovered that wan smoothing kills the bandwidth too much. I have eliminated that setting and things are much faster.

 

[Neal]

Mine is off which is the default it appears as I'm using stock settings other than the dynamic bonding option. No real data from me until I get Verizon back in the Pepwave and see how things work on the road.

I'm curious of your raw speeds vs. Speedfusion speeds. I expect going through a VPN, much less an additional hop(s) to go through FusionHub is going to have a speed penalty. Question is how much and is it worth it?

 

[redbaron]

I added 3 sources each have approx 100Mb/s
I have seen speeds as low as 60, and high as 240Mb/s.

What has been perfect is my zoom calls, RDP and Citrix sessions and overall connectivity.

 

[Neal]

I figured the benefit, one of several, would be to not have to see who's the fastest and be switching WAN's. Haven't always been impressed with all in priority 1 as I don't think Pepwave discards the first hop which is Ethernet to pepwave 2 so it always wins.

 

[redbaron]

One more thing: the speedfusion cloud is too expensive for streaming video, and is worthless for RV usage.

Fusionhub is the right solution for the technical person.

 

[redbaron]

I figured the benefit, one of several, would be to not have to see who's the fastest and be switching WAN's. Haven't always been impressed with all in priority 1 as I don't think Pepwave discards the first hop which is Ethernet to pepwave 2 so it always wins.

Agreed. I now have TMobile in the Peplink, an att M5 on the Ethernet and my parks wifi on the 5ghz wifi.

Sidenote: this park will aggressively knock on doors when the find a wifi ranger or Winegard connect SSID broadcasting.

When I checked in, they told me that all newmars have a wifi ranger and that it must be turned off.

Of course that's not a problem for me, but I found it funny that more parks are taking that aggressive approach.

This park also has a 5Ghz network using Ubiquiti and seems to have those fed with fiber. Done really well.

My guess is the tech doing the install got upset with the noise pollution WFR creates. Luckily it's mainly on the 2.4Ghz spectrum and we can just avoid it.

 

[Neal]

I went to my coach today to check a few things in prep for my upcoming trip and also to put my Verizon sim in Pep2 and test the Pepfusion/FusionHub situation. As I did a test of my IP address I noticed it was showing that of the AT&T cellular SIM. So the question comes to mind, how do I know traffic is going to/through FusionHub?

From a google search it appears only if you're communicating with your FusionHub destination, that Network I presume, are you routed through FusionHub. For example if I'm going to connect into my servers for whatever need. For Internet browsing you're not going through FusionHub. UNLESS you check the option Advanced > Speefusion "Send all traffic to"

https://knowhow.peplink.ninja/documentation/pepvpn-speedfusion/configuring-pepvpn-speedfusion-profiles/

Send all traffic to remote Hub

By default, only traffic that is destined for the remote hub will use the PepVPN /SpeedFusion tunnel. Other traffic, like internet browsing, will be routed directly to the internet, not via the remote hub.
When this option is selected, all traffic will be sent through the PepVPN / SpeedFusion tunnel.

@redbaron how do you have yours configured? I'm trying to figure out if I should have this option enabled or not and pro's/con's if so.

 

[redbaron]

I am using FusionHub first of all, because I want 100% of all my traffic going thru this. This differs from SpeedFusion in that I am providing the Datacenter connection for my RV.

This is what the connection looks like under advanced->speedfusion

So the way I handle traffic is thru the Policy.

Advanced -> Outbound Policy

This is what my policy looks like.

The first policy says that if I am using a SoftEtherVPN -- skip speed fusion. I do this for comparison of speeds on the provider vs going direct, and also when I need to alter my IP address for outbound reasons.

All other traffic, being IoT, laptops, guests, etc goes thru the SpeedFusion.

That custom policy looks like this:

In my InControl2 page, I can then control the fusion hub.

Depending on my physical location, I choose which fusion hub I want to connect to. As shown, I have 3 FusionHubs right now, located in Dallas, New Brunswick, and Seattle. The GPS is wrong for my Seattle location. I plan on adding another in Chicago and Denver, with the goal of being within 500 miles of my fusionhub at all times. This will minimize latency.