User Manual

USER MANUAL

Peplink Balance Series

10 Drop-in Mode

Drop-in Mode (or transparent bridging mode) eases the installation of Peplink Balance on a live network

between the firewall and router, such that changes to the settings of existing equipment are not required.

Drop-in Mode is NOT applicable to Balance 20 and 30.

The following diagram illustrates the Drop-in Mode setup:

Check the box to Enable the Drop-in Mode. After enabling this feature and selecting the WAN for Drop-in

mode, various settings including the WAN's connection method and IP address will be automatically

updated.

When Drop-in Mode is enabled, the LAN and the WAN for Drop-in Mode ports will be bridged. Traffic

going in between the LAN hosts and WAN router will be forwarded to each other. In this case, the hosts

on both sides will not notice any IP or MAC address change.

After successfully setting up Peplink Balance as part of the network via Drop-in Mode, a Peplink Balance

210 will accommodate one additional WAN connection; 310 or 380 will accommodate two, 580 will

accommodate four, 710 will accommodate six, and 1350 will accommodate twelve additional WAN

connections respectively.

IMPORTANT NOTE for customers using Drop-in Mode and

going to upgrade from firmware 4.8.2 or below to 5.0+

MAC address passthrough for Drop-in Mode is implemented in firmware 5.0. If Drop-in Mode is

enabled when user is upgrading from previous firmware version, the ARP tables on the hosts on LAN

and WAN segments have to be flushed once or the hosts have to be rebooted. Otherwise, hosts on

one side may not be able to reach hosts on the other side of Peplink Balance until the old ARP records

expire. Units without enabling Drop-in Mode are not affected.

NOTE

PPTP server will be disabled under Drop-in Mode.