D-Link DI-LB604 Dual-WAN Load Balancing Router Tips

edited by Earl on Jul-04-2010

Why would you want this router?
How to set up the router to access secure websites
How to set up the router to send email
How to get wireless internet with a dual-WAN router
How to connect a cable modem

Why would you want this router?

This router allows you to connect two modems to your network at the same time, like DSL and cable.  

• Increases your bandwidth for downloads and uploads, especially on torrents.
• Adds redundancy to your network to help ensure that you don't ever get kicked into offline mode again. Maybe you need to make sure you are always online or at least have an internet connection that works.

Well, this modem can help achieve those goals. However, it may take some tricks to get your internet connection working the way you want.

Problems when you set up the router for the first time...

Can not access secure websites.

Examples of sites I could not access:

• PayPal
• eBay
• Some Google websites, like their Adsense and Adwords sites
• my bank websites

Basically, any site that had "HTTPS://" in the URL would appear to be offline (the connection would time out) if I had both my DSL and cable modems on and attached to the DI-LB604 router. The only way I knew around this issue up until recently was to turn off one of the modems. It didn't matter which modem I chose to turn off, but they could not both work at the same time on secure websites.

How to set up the router to access secure websites

Log into your router. That usually means going to: http://192.168.0.1/ Go to "Set Protocol & Port Bindings". The screenshots below show the steps.

Enable a port range of 443 ~ 443 to use just one of your WAN's. I chose to use WAN1, which is now my DSL modem. So, whenever I access secure websites, the DI-LB604 router will channel all that internet activity through my DSL modem and ignore the cable modem connection.

Can not send SMTP email

I could not send SMTP email through my DSL modem.  

• Could not send email through Vista's Mail or Windows Mail program
• Could not send email alerts through my webcam software

I now understand that my DSL provider (AT&T Yahoo!) does not allow us to send SMTP email unless you use AT&T's server.  AT&T blocks port 25.  AT&T requires that we use AT&T's SMTP servers to send email and while our emails go throught their servers, our emails are filtered.  One of their SMTP server's has this address:  

smtp.att.yahoo.com

What if I want to send email through my own SMTP servers?   Like:

smtp.elperfecto.com

Well, AT&T won't allow that.  My cable modem service is different.  My cable provider is Cablelynx and they allow SMTP connections on port 25 with the server of my choice.

If you want to use SMTP to send email and your ISP does not let you, you could consider changing your ISP.  
www.thelist.com - ISP choices in your area

[ Edit:  I have sinced changed my email client to be Thunderbird and now I can send emails through my AT&T Yahoo DSL modem.  Thunderbird FTW!  I think Thunderbird is using a different port. ]  

How to set up the router to send email

Log into your router. That usually means going to: http://192.168.0.1/

Enable SMTP Binding. Screenshot below shows the steps.

As you can see above, I chose to use WAN1 only for my SMTP Binding Port.  WAN1 was my cable connection at the time I wrote this, which allows SMTP traffic.

End of article.

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COMMENTS

after as per your setting secure site is working proper but Internet is very slow because of load balancing is not working after this setting.


I'm not sure why your internet would be very slow with these settings.  Maybe you have a different hardware version?  I just flipped my router upside-down and see a label stating:
hardware version A1.

With these settings, you force one connection to handle all secure websites, those sites with "https" in the URL.  So, you will not be load balancing secure sites any more.  However, other traffic still gets load balanced.  Normal sites (with "http" in the URL) and other internet activity, including torrents, still work in load balancing mode, at least here on my LAN it does.  The setup still load balances normal, unsecured traffic.

Even without load balancing, secure sites are not slow for me.  They are slower than normal sites, but I think that's because the data is encrypted.   Or, perhaps their servers are slower because of many users connected at the same time.  I can imagine that many secure sites have many people logged in at any one moment.   But even so, I wouldn't classify the secure sites to be "slow" on my cable connection with no load balancing.  It's just normal.


Hi Earl, thanks for the help! But I´m curious: what is your firmware´s version?


According to my router's admin page:  
Firmware Version:    v.1.01 .03 Built Date: Nov 14 2006





after upgrading my firmware its working fine, now i have Firmware Version: v.1.01 .03 Built Date: Nov 14 2006

Hi Mate :

I am having the same router as you in my cyber cafe. Do you know how to separate WAN1 and WAN2 to do different task?for example, setting WAN1 for online gaming while WAN2 for HTTP web browsing(youtube,VOIP etc).

Thanks for helping!

Regards,
John



Since I have not had your issue, I don't know the exact solution.  However, this might help a little...



The settings above will force WAN2 to be the only WAN to use HTTP.

For your gaming, you will probably need to know what port range is used for the games.  Then you can add an item to your Virtual Server List (shown above) and force it to use WAN 1.

Good luck.



This router has a new 2009 firmware, https works fine , and has more options, you don't need to do any of the above steps depicted on this page, it is found at dlink's russia site FTP, I recommend every owner to upgrade to this latest version before dlink decided to discontinue support for this great product



That sure is interesting, gabriel.  I would like a new firmware but I'm wary of downloading from a Russian site.  Out of curiosity, I looked for the FTP site you mentioned and found this folder:

ftp.dlink.ru/pub/Router/DI-LB604/

You're saying you installed the firmware from there and it worked?  I wonder if it's in English.  What country are you located in?  Why doesn't the USA site offer this firmware and how in the world did you find this?  Thanks for sharing your tip.



hi again , I am venezuelan (located in venezuela :-P), the firmware is in english, and the router is working very well, I love it very much, and I have had this experience with dlink many times before, they make a product and they give support for it in other places but not at USA site or Australia or Latin America, so I have tried browsing their sites and found it there, it works very well, and I dont have the https problem, it's balancing the load very well and I can send some screenshots to you but I dont know how, copy pasting from the router page it shows this

Firmware Version: v.1.02 Built Date: Mar 5 2009

This is probably the latest firmware we will ever have for this product.

you're welcome!




A Yahoo page has a post with someone confirming that the Russia link worked for them:  

"D-link web support was crappy and latest firmware available on USA web site was no improvement. Found out that D-link had developed new version 1.02 firmware but would not post this new firmware on their USA web site for download. After many hours of searching for the mysterious 1.02 firmware, I finally found it available via FTP server based in Russia. Why D-link had hidden this firmware makes no sense to me since this firmware fixed all the problems I was having with the buggy versions 1.00 and 1.01 firmwares. This router with the 1.02 firmware kicks ass."

Gabriel emailed me some screenshots of his firmware downloaded from Russia.  Here is one of them...



It shows that the Russia firmware is 1.02 with a build date of Mar-5-2009.  Thanks, Gabriel, for sharing that.

I have not yet upgraded my firmware as I am not currently having any problems with my router.  I am currently using "v.1.01 .03 Built Date: Nov 14 2006".    Youtube is working fine with it, too.  If I run into problems with my router, I will try upgrading the firmware.



I upgraded mine last night and the router seems to work initially until I set a new password, then it's gone.  I had to reset it and reload back the old version from 2006.  Oh in my case, I did a backup of my existing configuration and did a reload on the 1.02 firmware, that may have been the problem.




Hmm, that doesn't sound good.  I wonder what would have happened if after you upgraded your firmware if you did not reload your backed up settings and instead manually typed them in.


Examples are fine here.But i have 2 livebox.with different speed.2bm and 256kbps.I dont know how to configure them.I configure load share WAN 1 85% and WAN 2 15& but when i download,the router seems to use the 15%! and some times it use both and the connection drained again.

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How to connect a cable modem to the DI-LB604?

edited by Earl on Jun-18-2008

Recently my old cable modem stopped connecting to the internet.  The modem lasted about 8 years so I am sad to see it go.  I called my cable company and they sent a technician to my home to check out my internet trouble.  The technician said my signal strength was fine.  He went out to his truck and brought back a new, rental modem and connected it to my cable.  His modem worked and connected to the internet.  So, we concluded that my old modem must have died.  

I had this new cable modem connected to my DI-LB604 D-Link router for several days with no problems.  I didn't have to make any adjustments to the router to get the router to acknowledge the new modem.  It just worked.  But then, a few days ago, it stopped working.  The dual-WAN router sees my DSL modem, but it does not see the cable modem.  What happened?

The cable modem is a Motorola SB5101.  



Here is the modem connected to the router.




The router shows an active LED for the DSL router on WAN 2, but the cable connection on WAN 1 is dead... the LED's for WAN 1 are off.



So, how am I going to fix this?  How can I get the router to see that WAN 1 is connected to my cable modem?  Here was my solution...

Enable both WAN connections

I guess if WAN 2 is set as a backup, then when WAN 1 comes online, the router disconnects from the "backup" WAN 2.  That makes sense.

Conclusion

If you want your router to actively use both WAN 1 and WAN 2, then make sure you enable them... don't make either of them a "backup".

But, why was the router working fine with two internet connections for several days and then suddenly stopped working?  I didn't make any change to the router settings to cause it to go offline originally.  It's possible the router got rebooted during a power failure, but I don't know for sure.  My guess is that it has to do with getting a new cable modem several days before the router failure. Maybe putting a new cable modem into the router requires a MAC Address change.  If the router did get rebooted, then maybe the router realized that the cable modem changed and it didn't like using the same MAC Address for the new modem.  

It's strange, but the MAC Address on the bottom of the modem does not match the value I entered into the router settings.  When I tried to use the MAC Address on the sticker on the bottom of the modem, the router didn't like that, either.  If changing one of the modems, it may be necessary to change the MAC Address to a new value, one that is similar to the router's MAC address, with just the last digit being different.

The router is using both of the internet connections, both DSL and cable.  The router has been running well for several months with these settings.

End of section.

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COMMENTS

Hi, my name is Davy, I'm from Brazil, I have a cyber cafe here, and I have two adsl internet links 2MB and 4MB, I'm using the DI-LB604 it are with the last firmware, and I'm facing problems with youtube, sometimes de video is played sometimes I receive the message saing that video are unavailable, could you help me, thanks in advance.

 

I used to have the same problem.  It was annoying.  When trying to play a Youtube video, it had a 50/50 chance of playing.  Half the time, I would see a black video box with the error:
We're sorry, this video is no longer available.



I'm guessing that YouTube wants us to connect with a single IP address.  Why?  To better track our video watching history?  I don't know.

My solution to the problem was either:
1.  Keep refreshing the web page until it did load up.

2.  Turn one of my modems off.  It didn't matter which modem I chose to turn off.  This forced YouTube to work on just one IP address and then the problem went away.  When I was done with YouTube, I would turn the second modem back on.



HI IM facing similar problem but this time on friensder.com. This does mean that friensdter too wants to connect us with a single IP?

How can I configure friendster.com to connect either one of the two WAN ports dedicatedly?

Thanks


Hi,
I'm facing an DI-LB604 issue.

I've 2 internet conection:
1º) ADSL 2Mbits  no autentication needed
2º) ADSL 1Mbits  with PPOE autentication

Both are configurated as enable with load balance 50%/50%.

When both conection are in a good Health everything goes OK and those 20 PC's on the LAN has a very good internet navegation.

But when one of ADSL has a problem on the provider or the ADSL trafic or ...., the DI-LB604 stay lost and I cant have internet over the 20 PCs on the LAN.

If I turned OFF tha ADSL modem that is making the problem and take out the cable RJ45 from the LB604 and / or reset the LB604 the conection for navegation came back.

So, the LB604 in not detecting and changing from WAN1 to WAN2 or WAN2 to WAN1 or making the correct check in the Health of both ADSL conection.

Now I'm working only with the ADSL 2mbits plugeded RJ45 in WAN1 all the time..., when the WAN1 / ADSL 2Mibts fail I unplug RJ45 from WAN1 and plug the other ADSL 1Mbits RJ45 into the WAN2...

So, I'm balancing my onw ADSL's conections...

Could some one help me to configure DI-LB604 as the best for 2 ADSLs ?

Regards,
August


I want to ask a question. Does the DI-LB604 takes 2 ADSL lines and convert it into one?
suppose i have to upload a movie; will it be uploaded using both lines or only one?


Yash, it depends on how many IP addresses you are connecting to.  If you are connecting to only one IP address, then you will upload with just one ADSL line.  If you are connecting to two or more IP addresses, then you will upload with both of your ADSL lines.  

Examples:  If you upload a video to a video sharing site like Youtube, you will use only one of your ADSL lines.  If you upload a video as a torrent and then your computer connects to multiple computers through a bittorrent, you will upload using both of your ADSL lines.  In fact, these routers really shine during torrent downloading and uploading.

One last example:  If you have a network of computers sharing this router, then one computer may use a different ADSL line as the other computers.  The router is load-balancing so that the network activity gets distributed across both of your internet connections.

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How to get wireless internet with a dual-WAN router

Edited by Earl Feb-28-2010

I've been using this dual-WAN router for a couple years and have been waiting for a solution to let me use Wi-Fi AND the dual-WAN at the same time.  Well, I finally found a fix!

TRENDnet TEW-637AP 
Wireless 802.11N Upgrader

I plugged this TRENDnet wireless upgrader into one of the LAN ports of my D-Link DI-LB604 Dual-WAN router and it's working like a champ!


The installation was easy... one of the easiest computer upgrades I've ever made.  I've been using it for 9 month now as of this update.  Very happy with this device.  It has enabled us to get online, wirelessly, with a:

• Dell notebook
• Nokia N810 internet tablet
• Wii
• Nintendo DSi

Our devices connected wirelessly within minutes of opening the TRENDnet TEW-637AP wireless upgrader box.

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