WAN Failover

In my previous Dual-WAN failover article, I moved from a TP-Link ER605 (slowest device ever) to a MikroTik hEX S. That setup worked, but it also sent me down the usual rabbit hole of buying increasingly specialised router hardware for a problem which does not actually need it. Repeatable infrastructure should depend on open networking standards and replaceable commodity hardware, not a particular router model, vendor GUI, or temporarily available development board. ...

Initial setup Initially, I had set up a TP-Link ER605 (TL-R605) V2 router to handle the dual WANs - on paper, it checked all the boxes: load balancing, failover, and a relatively affordable price point. But in practice, it turned out to be a frustrating experience. The biggest issue was how excruciatingly slow the device was to boot and handle failover. In a setup where uptime actually matters, waiting around for the router to recover or switch links defeats the whole purpose of having redundancy in the first place. Failover should feel seamless - this felt anything but. ...