[ASUS RT-AX55] Load-balancing and IPv6

[Corgei]

Hello everyone!

I'm trying to use my RT-AX55 as both Wi-Fi 6 and Load-balancing device for my 2 WANs. The problem is when I enabled IPv6 Passthrough for it after the Dual WAN is configured with WAN as Primary and Ethernet LAN 1 as Secondary (both of them are DHCP from the ISP's Routers), the router CANNOT receive the IPv6... IPv6 Passthrough still works well for Fail-over or Single WAN.

There is also a problem if the Ethernet LAN 1 is configured as Automatic IP, you know what, when my ISP Router push DHCP through the LAN to this port, my PC received the IP FROM the ISP Router, not the RT-AX55 at first DURING its reboot. I personally think this is a bug in the firmware, basically, the Eth LAN 1 should be permanently stay in WAN mode after you turn on the Dual WAN, not Switch mode to prevent DHCP of the ISP Router pushes to clients of ASUS router...

Attached is the image for the infrastructure, sorry for the Vietnamese, I tried the Vigor300B from DrayTek but it is too old to have the IPv6 Passthrough



Best regards.

[RedSector73]

Do you have Draytek Vigor300b in front of the Asus RT-AX55 or any other device including ISP modem and if so is it able to pass?

[Corgei]

Saw someone replied but it seems that posted got deleted.

[RedSector73]

The deletion was me, for my post, I wanted to read Asus RT-AX55 manual as well. I had only read Drytek at the time I first posted.

This is not easy to answer and my knowledge from limited experience of using consumer grade routers albeit fair amount of them and I may be wrong or misguided in my beliefs ...

Anyway,

The DrayTek Vigor300b does not support load balancing and IPv6. It supports IPv6 but only IPv4, in your local network, when you include load balancing. I am not actually sure that any consumer grade routers do IPv6 + load balancing/failover that don’t cost ++++ dollars.

You could try custom firmware from https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/ but it appears your selected Asus router isn’t covered because well it's considered a *cheap router (cheap, not my words).

Which leads to this point, PFsence routers (which is computer hardware or dedicated off the shelf builds), and are not considered consumer grade, do. I actually moved to one of these from Asus routers (Asus routers cost is stupid high for what you get ~imo), but I don't have IPv6 from my ISP to answer, yes this works but I believe it will. So, at least consider looking into PFsence if this must be accomplished and you have the skills to program / use them. The learning curve is real with Pfsence, but I found, very worth it and to be honest fun, YMMV.

Otherwise my recommendation is use drytek have IPv6 facing the Internet with IPv4 for your local network, the translation layer in the drytek *should allow IPv6 to resolve locally. (*I don’t own one to test and my ISP has not activated IPv6 yet)

So, in summary, IPv6 within local networking with load balancing/failover is RARE as request for consumer grade router and not sure I ever used consumer grade that can do it but they might exist.

My last point, is your ISP router, if your using in front of the consumer router (whatever you choose), the ISP router must support IPv6 handover in the mode you are running it, there are lot that don’t support IPv6 when running in bridge mode and you compromise network security using ISP router to handle anything more as they often have backdoors built in.

Hope you find some this helpful in your quest.

[Corgei]

RedSector73 wrote:
The deletion was me, for my post, I wanted to read Asus RT-AX55 manual as well. I had only read Drytek at the time I first posted.

This is not easy to answer and my knowledge from limited experience of using consumer grade routers albeit fair amount of them and I may be wrong or misguided in my beliefs ...

Anyway,

The DrayTek Vigor300b does not support load balancing and IPv6. It supports IPv6 but only IPv4, in your local network, when you include load balancing. I am not actually sure that any consumer grade routers do IPv6 + load balancing/failover that don’t cost ++++ dollars.

You could try custom firmware from https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/ but it appears your selected Asus router isn’t covered because well it's considered a *cheap router (cheap, not my words).

Which leads to this point, PFsence routers (which is computer hardware or dedicated off the shelf builds), and are not considered consumer grade, do. I actually moved to one of these from Asus routers (Asus routers cost is stupid high for what you get ~imo), but I don't have IPv6 from my ISP to answer, yes this works but I believe it will. So, at least consider looking into PFsence if this must be accomplished and you have the skills to program / use them. The learning curve is real with Pfsence, but I found, very worth it and to be honest fun, YMMV.

Otherwise my recommendation is use drytek have IPv6 facing the Internet with IPv4 for your local network, the translation layer in the drytek *should allow IPv6 to resolve locally. (*I don’t own one to test and my ISP has not activated IPv6 yet)

So, in summary, IPv6 within local networking with load balancing/failover is RARE as request for consumer grade router and not sure I ever used consumer grade that can do it but they might exist.

My last point, is your ISP router, if your using in front of the consumer router (whatever you choose), the ISP router must support IPv6 handover in the mode you are running it, there are lot that don’t support IPv6 when running in bridge mode and you compromise network security using ISP router to handle anything more as they often have backdoors built in.

Hope you find some this helpful in your quest.

Good guidance, I tried all possible ways to setup the desired infrastructure but some failed using only IPv4 as the ASUS router couldn't handle, if I use the DrayTek router to dial PPPoE, both of the WAN succeeded but comes to a problem that my IPTV of the FPT line cannot run sometimes because they switching over the lines for load-balancing, the only way to make it worked is configure the LAN port 2 with VLAN and point-in-use for only of the FPT PPPoE.

Another option which is just as you said, I used the DrayTek as for 1 PPPoE and 1 DHCP for the WANs, having the DHCPv6 of lan1 to be configured automatically, point its IPv6 Protocol to be DHCP SLA interfacing with WAN 1 (VNPT), that way I can still use IPv6 & IPv4 of the VNPT while load-balancing with the FPT IPv4 with Link-local IPv6. After that, I use the LAN port to connect with my ASUS router and enabled all the features of AI Protection and IP Passthrough. However, I still love the load-balancing feature of the ASUS router, making me to have 1200 Mbps for Downloading while the DrayTek has only 500 Mbps in both IP Based and Session Based.

For Pfsense, it's good but I don't know if it supports Dual stack IPv4 & IPv6 load-balancing or not and I have to find some kinds of old pc to install the FreeBSD (I recall) to it, however, I'll try with some Intel NUC I can find.

Thank you for your supports!

[RedSector73]

Corgei wrote:
For Pfsense, it's good but I don't know if it supports Dual stack IPv4 & IPv6 load-balancing or not and I have to find some kinds of old pc to install the FreeBSD (I recall) to it, however, I'll try with some Intel NUC I can find.

Thank you for your supports!

Try reading through here
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/network/ipv6/requirements.html

Download PFsence (on what you coble together for a test, use Intel LAN's)
https://www.pfsense.org/download/

If you want decent NUC device, can I tempt you in something like this.... may have bought one (ok, yeah I did and love it)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001290763790.html?
https://rog.asus.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=89292&d=1626004706

[Corgei]

RedSector73 wrote:
Try reading through here
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/network/ipv6/requirements.html

Download PFsence (on what you coble together for a test, use Intel LAN's)
https://www.pfsense.org/download/

If you want decent NUC device, can I tempt you in something like this.... may have bought one (ok, yeah I did and love it)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001290763790.html?
https://rog.asus.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=89292&d=1626004706

It's expensive, for Pfsense, should be some devices I can use for 2 WANs RJ45 to load balance them, also another RJ45 at least 1Gbps, so far the Netgate 1100 can cover this work for me.

[RedSector73]

Corgei wrote:
It's expensive, for Pfsense, should be some devices I can use for 2 WANs RJ45 to load balance them, also another RJ45 at least 1Gbps, so far the Netgate 1100 can cover this work for me.

We have very different requirements, I was in the market for complete massive overkill that will last 10 plus years regardless of software development cycles, can run VPN and possibly be a NAS device.

This is interesting
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002443541656.html?

the netgate 1100 has 2gb of memory which if using PFblocker + other 3rd party applications is generally speaking not enough and next step up bring pricing of the above (link) into thinking about as a compare to netgate offerings.

Anyway just ideas for you to consider against your own requirements/budget. The NG1100 is a solid unit for the price.