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Add a Peplink BR1 Mini to an Existing Network for Cellular Backup

A common deployment for the Peplink BR1 Mini family of devices is to provide cellular backup for an existing network. If there is a router or firewall already in place that will be handling the failover between two ethernet WAN connections, plugging a Peplink BR1 Mini into the secondary WAN is a great way to add cellular functionality without changing the core network and with minimal changes to the existing edge router. There are two ways of accomplishing this setup, NATing the traffic at the BR1 Mini and passing the cellular IP through to a LAN client.

Option 1: NATing traffic at the Peplink BR1 Mini for Plug and Play

In the first method, the Peplink router terminates the cellular IP address and provides a private IP address to the firewall. When the Firewall fails from the primary WAN to its secondary WAN (which is the Peplink router) and its cellular connection. This is a plug and play setup requiring very little configuration to the Peplink router outside some best practice basics such as changing the default login credentials and ensuring the LAN network does not overlap with any existing subnets.

Option 2: Providing the Cellular IP to a LAN Client

If one of the goals of cellular backup is to maintain inbound access for phones, network management, any other reason, there is a way to do that as well. For inbound access, a public static IP will be needed from the cellular carrier. This is a critical step and without it, inbound access is not possible.

With that public static IP address, the router can then be set up in IP Passthrough mode which results in the router handing the public static IP to the first LAN client to request an IP through DHCP. This has the effect of eliminating the routing functions of the Peplink BR1 mini and treating it as a cellular modem with an ethernet handoff.  The best thing about the IP passthrough configuration is that it’s as simple as its goal, a simple checkbox in the cellular settings will do the trick.

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