Setup and Configuration - WAN

The Network > WAN screen again presents numerous options that won't be familar to those who aren't IT pros. The Route tab lets you set the Routing Priority (metric) for the WAN, Traffic Redirection and Dialup back up features. It also contains checkboxes to allow Windows Networking (NetBIOS over TCP/IP) to trigger a dialup session and to allow networking traffic to flow between WAN and LAN. The latter seems an odd choice for a checkbox here, given that it is more a firewall function.

As mentioned earlier, the WAN screen in Figure 7 provides more WAN configuration options than the Internet Access Wizard. Except for the Service Type dropdown, most of the options you see are also available with PPPoE and PPTP connections. PPPoE and PPTP setup options include PAP/CHAP, PAP and CHAP authentication and connection nail-up, but an MTU adjustment control was nowhere to be found.

Figure 7: WAN screen

The Traffic Redirect and Dial Backup tabs support failover features that provide two backup connection options should the normal Internet connection path fail. Traffic Redirect pings a WAN IP address that you enter (the time between pings and response timeout are programmable) and switches the 2 Plus' gateway to the IP address of a backup gateway that you enter. Should that connection then fail, you can configure a dialup backup to kick in using the controls in Figure 8. The 2 plus supplies the serial port (via an RJ45 connector); you supply the modem. I didn't test either of these options.

Figure 8: Dialup backup screen (click image to enlarge)