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

edited by Earl on Jan-02-2009

Why would you want this router?

You may be hoping to increase your bandwidth for downloads or uploads. Perhaps you want to add 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.

What are some of the problems when you set up the router for the first time?

Here are a couple problems I had:

1. Could 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.

2. Could not send email using my Windows Mail program

   I could not send SMTP email with my DSL modem ON and connected to the DI-LB604 router. Only my cable modem can send SMTP email. I don't think my DSL provider (AT&T Yahoo!) allows me to send SMTP email through their ISP service, but my cable provider (Cablelynx) does.

Here are the solutions that worked for me...

1. 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.









2. 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

how to setup DI-LB 604 to use two wan im trying to configure but i cant access anything please help please
 

Without having any details of your setup, it's hard to know what the issue is with your router.  You can't access anything?  Does that mean you can't access the internet with either WAN?  Or, you can't access the router settings?   I'm sorry you're having trouble.  The more information you provide, the more likely you will receive help.


DILB604 not proper working on banking or other secure site


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.

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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?  

Step 1:  trouble-shoot the cable connection.  Is the cable modem working?  

I unplugged the cable modem from the router and connected it directly to a computer's ethernet port.  The computer was able to connect to the internet through the cable modem.  That shows that the cable modem is working fine and the cable connection is online.

So, why doesn't the router see the cable modem when the cable modem is plugged into the WAN 1 port?  It worked for several days but then just stopped, maybe after the router was rebooted or powered off and on.

Step 2:  What happens if I plug the cable modem into WAN 2?

For many months, my cable modem was connected to WAN 1.  But now WAN 1 is dead.  So, I plugged the cable modem into WAN 2.  The LED's turned on!  That means that the router sees the cable modem on WAN 2 but it didn't see it on WAN 1.  Remember, I made no changes to the router when this problem occurred.  When I plugged my DSL modem to WAN 1, all LED's lit up.  The DSL modem could transfer data with the internet.  But, the cable modem still did not tranfer data with the internet, so this issue is not yet fixed.

Step 3:  Turn off cable modem and router for five minutes.  Let them fully reboot.

Result:  no change.

Step 4:  Investigate MAC ID settings

I changed the MAC ID for my cable connection and it came online!  This seems pretty dumb that changing the MAC ID would fix this.

Step 5:  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.  

When I changed the MAC address of the cable modem, the router rebooted itself.  When the router rebooted, it connected to the cable modem faster than it connected to the DSL modem.  So, for a short time the DSL modem was disconnected, so the backup line, WAN 2... the cable modem, came online.  Once WAN 1...the DSL modem... connected, the router disconnected from the backup WAN 2.

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 article.

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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.

However, know that you mention it, I haven't seen this issue in weeks.  I wonder if YouTube finally fixed this problem.

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