Mwan3 On Openwrt

Here are tips for setting up mwan3 via terminal / uci configs for Openwrt (last tested 19.07).

Tips/Troubleshooting

Firewall zones must include wan2/wanb in addition to wan

In /etc/config/firewall

see this:

 config zone
	option conntrack 	'1'
	option name		wan
	option input		REJECT
	option output		ACCEPT
	option forward		REJECT
	option masq		1
	option mtu_fix		1
	option network		'wan wan6 wan2'

the above is a working mwan3 firewall config (17)(zone only, other items omitted).

see this:

config zone
       option conntrack '1'
       option name 'wan'
       list network 'wan'
       list network 'wan6'
       option input 'REJECT'
       option output 'ACCEPT'
       option masq '1'
       option mtu_fix '1'
       option forward 'ACCEPT'

This one only works with wan, not wan2 (19)

See why?

(What happens is that DNS will fail on the second wan only (port 53 ICMP unreachable is one such error tcpdump may report), but only from clients on the lan. Not from the router itself. It's not easy to track via iptables, although you can see the rejects increasing with iptables -L -v)

note that the latter is 19.07, and the former 17 So instead of option network in 17, we have list network in 19. conntrack should also be enabled. Rest is default.

Conntrack should be enabled

See above.

Be consistent, whether wan2 or wanb. Label must match /etc/config/network

If you set the label of the new /etc/config/network wan interface to be wan2 instead of wanb then you should change the below rules and policies accordingly in /etc/config/mwan3. Or, just keep wanb.

config rule 'https'
        option sticky '1'
        option dest_port '443'
        option proto 'tcp'
        option use_policy 'wan_wan2'

config rule 'default_rule_v4'
        option dest_ip '0.0.0.0/0'
        option use_policy 'wan_wan2'
        option family 'ipv4'

config rule 'default_rule_v6'
        option dest_ip '::/0'
        option use_policy 'wan_wan2'
        option family 'ipv6'

The wan2 is read from /etc/config/network, e.g.

config interface 'wan2'  # ISP2
        option ifname 'eth2'
        option proto 'static'
        option ipaddr 'staticiphere'
        option netmask '255.255.255.0'
        option gateway 'staticgatewayhere'
        option dns 'yourfavoritedns'
        option metric '20'
#make sure that firewall has both wans in its list networks or option networks
#also add a metric for each wan.

That "config interface 'wan2'" is what is important.

Balanced Policy Internet Errors

I've seen issues with the default balanced policy only. Either, some manual troubleshooting / investigation is needed into the services breaking or you can try by setting the 'stickiness' on port 443, and 80. Perhaps 443 and 80 alone is not enough. With just balanced, it may not work 100%.

However, simply setting a wan2_wan or wan_wan2 policy (where one is failover only), will work out of the box.