In a mission critical environment where uninterrupted internet connection is required to support a business to keep running, the deployment of business class router with fail-over and load balance capability is a must. In a fail-over system, the connection will fail-over to the backup connection when the primary connection fails to function. This is to assure an uninterrupted internet connection services to support your business.

In multi-connection broadband internet services, the load balance feature to select the best connection line automatically according to the load is also important. By distributing the load not just concentrated to a single line, the load distribution will be balanced for optimum performance. TP-Link TL-R4299G is an affordable business class dual WAN router that supports fail-over and load balancing. What this product does to support your business? Does it fit to meet your business need?

Dual WAN

TP-Link TL-R4299G is a dual WAN router – a business class router which includes two WAN Ethernet ports to let you connect to two different ISPs for your broadband Internet connections. The router is embedded with dual WAN ports based on the Intel XScale technology and is adopting multi-CPU distributed processing with maximum frequency of up to 533MHz. with the heavy duty operation, you don’t need to worry with the power failure because the router is equipped with the built-in high-redundancy power module.

Load Balancing and Failover

With two broadband internet connection, the router supports failover and load balancing features. You can subscribe to two different Internet services, for example one primary line is for ADSL service and the other line is for Cable Internet service. With load balancing feature, the router selects the best line automatically according to the load – no manual work is required.

Gigabit LAN Ports

TP-Link TL-R4299G dual WAN router includes 8xGigabit (10/100/1000Mbps) LAN Ethernet ports to let you connect up to 8 client computers with wired connections to the router. Or you can expand the number of ports by adding more Gigabit Switches. Or even you can add one or more wireless access point devices for wireless services.

The other important features this router support are the IP and port-based Quality of Services (QoS). You can prioritize certain IP addresses for streaming multimedia over other IPs or even you can provide port-based prioritizations for certain intensive bandwidth applications such as for gaming or video conferencing. This is advantageous in providing the quality of services for selected IP addresses or ports.

Does it Meet Your Business Need?

Now, compared to other business class routers this router still has disadvantages regarding the security. The router offers basic security features including IP and MAC Address bindings (to limit the ability of hostile entities to attack your private network), the ability to control the access based on the time of the day etc. However, to provide a comprehensive security protection against any emerging internet threats – you need to add such kind of UTM (Unified Threat Management) appliance for viruses, malware, and other threats protections. This will give you overhead cost but it is worth for protecting your valuable business information assets. But, we are all aware that deploying a secure network is costly. Compare with Cisco RV016 which supports the Cisco Protect-Link (optional) to dynamically filter the contents comprehensively. But this feature is not free; you have to subscribe in a yearly basis for the services.

Remember that developing a secure network for comprehensive protection against any emerging Internet threats is very expensive but it is worth for your critical business information assets protection.

For developing an environment where load balance and fail-over system is required, the TP-Link TL-R4299G dual WAN router is an affordable solution.

Graduated from technical college with MCSE and CCNA certifications and prolonged years of working experiences in IT projects, Ki Grinsing shares his knowledge in computer networking. For small businesses, consider Rv082 dual wan router and wrvs4400n wireless security router.