How Do I Configure the Flow/Load Balance on TP-Link Dual WAN Ports Router?

Why need configure the Flow Balance?

The 2 WAN ports router features fully automatically load balance policy, no need for any manually work, it works with backup and load balancing functions.

But sometimes you would like to control the flow flexibly on your own opinion, for example, you want to specify some packets prior forwarding from WAN port 1, which depend on specified source or destination IP addresses, in this case you can configure Flow Balance to achieve your detail requirement.

How to configure the Flow Balance?

Step 1 Open the web browser and type the LAN IP address of the router in the address bar, the default IP address of TP-Link router is 192.168.1.1, and then press Enter.

Step 2 Type the username and password in the login page, the default username and password both are admin.

Step 3 Click Network->Flow Balance on the left of the page. You can specify priority channels according to source or destination IP addresses, distributing flexibly Internet resource and services from different ISPs.

Enable/Disable WAN - Enable the WAN port you want to use, then click Save to make it effective.
Additional IP Address dispatch rules - Enable the function and then make the dispatch rules.
Backup - Click the button to backup the list files.
Upload - Click the button to upload an existed file. You can click Browse to locate the specific file first, and then click the Upload List Files to complete the process.
Rules list - This table displays the current dispatch rules.

Step 4 Click Add New button to add a dispatch rule.

Other configurations for the entries as shown in the diagram

Click the Delete button to delete the entry.
Click the Enable All button to enable all the entries.
Click the Disable All button to disable all the entries.
Click the Delete All button to delete all the entries.
Click the Previous button to view the information in the previous screen.
Click the Next button to view the information in the next screen.

Step 5 In the page of Flow Balance Control, you can select the Rules select, Protocol, Datagram Pass Policy and Transmit Path and enter IP address and Port according to your need.

There are two rules can be selected, “From LAN, source IP/Protocol/Port (range)” and “To WAN, destination IP/Protocol/Port (range)”.

And there are three principles to configure the Flow Balance, which are based on IP address only, based on Port only and based on IP address and Port at the same time. Next we take different examples to show the detail configurations.

Examples

Flow Balance which is based on IP address only

Demand

All the data on the LAN computers which IP Addresses are between 192.168.1.10 and 192.168.1.50 access the Internet passes through WAN1 only.

Configuration

Click Save button to save the settings.

Flow Balance which is based on Port only

Demand

The data from LAN to access the website (port is 80) pass through WAN1 prior.

Configuration

Click Save button to save the settings.

Flow Balance which is based on IP address and Port at the same time

Demand

The data of downloading files with FTP (port is 21) from FTP Server (IP Address is 202.205.10.22) pass through WAN2 prior.

Configuration

Click Save button to save the settings.