Edimax ER-1088 load balancer evens up the odds

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Product: Edimax ER-1088 load balancer
Website: Product details
System Requirements: Ethernet support
Price: Approx. £550, $1,099

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WE'VE RECENTLY been tinkering with load balancing devices, most of which are a known quantity and are readily available within the standard UK market.

Load balancing internet connections can involve immense complications and incredibly sophisticated techniques (e.g. MLPPP and BGP configurations).

If you're using more than one ISP, you may have to involve each company in turn and ensure that they can provide specific support to allow for the bonding of each connection - something that is costly, time consuming, and very difficult to setup.

Fortunately, cheaper, much easier to use devices are available - your typical e-store will now sell dual-WAN routers that will provide simple fail-over and load balancing of two internet connections.

Some of the more high-end load balancers come with more than two WAN ports and provide massively complicated features for both incoming and outgoing load balancing.

While dabbling at the higher-end of the market, we came across what appeared to be an exceedingly cheap sophisticated load-balancer - a device usually priced in the £2,000-£4,000 price bracket, but which we imported for USD $1,099, which equates to around £550 and yes, customs charges apply.

While this was imported from the US, the power supply is auto adjusting, so you can connect a UK style lead and plug directly to it from the mains.

The Edimax ER-1088 comes with a staggering eight ports that are all configurable to use as WAN connections. eight other Ethernet ports are included for LAN access and DMZ setup.

The front of the Edimax ER-1088 - apologies for the mess, it was in actual use and impossible to detach!

It's so new that you'll not find it anywhere in the UK, nor will you find any web reviews - and we've been playing with one for a good month.

You also won't find too many people with the device, which adds to the problems when trying to Google for technical tip-bits and advice. Unfortunately Edimax's marketing doesn't help - the company's web pages and general sales pitch could do with a considerable overhaul. For instance, the company pitches the device as an enterprise product, but then poorly compares bonded consumer DSL lines to the quality of a T1 - something that doesn't really stack up.

But these are misgivings about a very new product, and a company that needs its sales material spruced up - not about the product itself.

The device is feature packed with a variety of features you'd expect in a high-end load balancer, and below we examine the device screen-by-screen to give you an overview of the majority of the major features.

Load balancing screen.

It houses inbound load-balancing and a built in authoritative DNS server, meaning that you can host web-sites in a fully redundant fashion, over multiple IPs and ISPs.

Authoritative DNS server screen.

We've tested the device for a good month now, in a small office, and have suffered no problems as of yet. Load balancing between three ISPs, users were unaware there Internet connections were load balanced over three different routes, and the load balancing appeared effective and issue free (the screen shots here show two ISP connections).

System status screen.

The device has the usual virtual server setup policies, allowing routes to be defined to individual machines for specific serving needs.

Virtual server screen.

Obviously some applications and/or servers need specific port bindings or persistency setups, this can be done in the following screens.

Port binding and persistency screen.

The logging is of a high quality, and whilst you can view the syslog on the actual web admin screen, it can also be output to either an SNMP server or syslog server. We tested the syslog service using Kiwi Syslog daemon, and it worked fine, but were unable to get SNMP working - Edimax are working on the issue.

The logging configuration.

It also has configuration screens that allow URL and/or service filtering, QoS settings, the setting up of IPSec compatible VPN tunnels, among other features.

The 8-port WAN router specifications in full:

• Supports up to 8 WAN ports and up to 253 users
• Supports both Inbound and outbound load balancing
• Has a Built-in DNS Server providing inbound load balancing
• Performs Outbound load balancing with 8 algorithm: bytes Rx+Tx, packet Rx+Tx, Session, IP address, Auto Learning, Fastest, Highest Priority,
• Round-robin and Weighted Round-Robin
• Advanced NAT features to set up DMZ, DDNS, Remote Management Routing, Virtual Servers, SNMP, and ARP proxy
• The Enterprise Firewall allows 5 group of LAN users with their distinct access filter
• Supports Transparent Bridge Mode
• Includes Quality of Service (QoS)
• Sends Email alerts

In Short
Excellent, cost-effective solution for load balancing a small business - or even hosting small web-sites.
Working SNMP features need to be added.

The Good
One of the cheapest load balancing routers in the wild - especially given 8-WAN ports.
High degree of logging.
Simple to use menu and configuration.

The Bad
The device probably needs a longer term test, and its actual maximum throughput is hard to measure.
SNMP service seems to be broken.

The Ugly
Not directly available anywhere but the US, but can be imported.

Bartender's Report

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L'Inq
Edimax ER-1088