Cudy New Gigabit Multi-WAN VPN Router, Up to 4 Gigabit WAN Ports, SMB Router, Load Balance, Lightning Protection, PPTP L2TP WireGuard OpenVPN IPsec VPN Router

I bought this for our home network, which has Spectrum main and Verizon 4G LTE backup Internet services. The Spectrum service is delivered through a cable modem in bridge mode to WAN1 of the Cudy R700, and the Verizon Business Gateway is set for IP pass-through on WAN2. The R700 has a standard GUI that is easy to access and the various settings are easy to adjust. As some others have noted, those among us that want to use an unlimited bandwidth main Internet connection and a capped backup connection suffer from a lack of information. I hope that this review will help with this. Log in to the R700 and go to General Settings > WAN Mode and select port 2 to create WAN2. Be sure to click Save & Apply and now you have WAN1 and WAN2 set up. Now connect your uncapped service on port 1 / WAN1 and your capped backup service port 2 / WAN2. You can then take port 5 / LAN and connect it to your home router / home network. Verify the LEDs on all of the ports are flashing to visually confirm activity, and then in the GUI go to System Status to confirm that the R700 indeed "sees" WAN1 and WAN2 "Connected" and online. Click Load Balancing > More Details > Settings > Member. Click Edit on WAN1 and set Metric=1 and Weight=3 and then click Save. Click Edit on WAN2 and set Metric=2 and Weight=3 and then click Save. My R700 came with Firmware Version 1.15.5 UN and required no other modifications than these, and the result is all traffic on WAN1 and zero traffic on WAN2. When WAN1 goes down WAN2 will take 100% of the traffic. Lastly, when WAN1 comes back online, traffic is rerouted 100% back to WAN1 and WAN2 returns to idle / failover mode. I have performed extensive testing to confirm this behavior over several days and confirmed it with data usage details on the cellular account. The failover performance is impressive, and the R700's interface tracking is superb with its out-of-the-box settings. The R700 can determine if service is up or down with such sensitivity that even active video streams are not interrupted when pulling the WAN1 connection right out of the port. Spectrum service in my area is good, but has occasional outages a few times per year lasting an hour or two at a time on average, and if the power goes down Spectrum goes down too. Our home has a backup generator and our network has a large UPS as well, so the Verizon cellular connection never goes down but it is slower and costly, so it is imperative that it is used strictly for backup use. We work from home and have an extensive amount of IoT devices, tablets, phones, security cameras, lights, thermostats etc. that require a constant Internet connection in order to maintain the control and convenience of the entire home; we now no longer have to worry about the Spectrum outages on account of the failover performance of this multi-WAN device. The Verizon backup service is provisioned for 1 GB of data per month and we have not exceeded the allowance thus far. That said, each additional GB block of data is $15, so again it is crucial that the device NOT use WAN2 at all unless WAN1 goes down, and the R700 does the job very well in my experience. I had to get the information on the Metric and Weight settings from Cudy directly, which did respond to my email about a week after I sent it, so I just posted this review in order to help anyone that wanted to employ the R700 for a similar purpose. Please be aware that if the above steps are not taken, the WAN1 and WAN2 ports when enabled will be utilized in Load Balancing mode with the device defaults, which will effectively divide your traffic between the interfaces, which WILL consume data on WAN2; in other words, NOT failover. I hope this helps and I am very happy that with a small investment of just a little time and patience on the R700 to make sure it was set the way we needed. There is no other device of this type available at this time that can deliver this kind of performance for $50. It's a solid device with good performance at a great price, well worth just a little effort during setup to ensure your highly online life remains connected through the inevitable outages that will come. A++

This router replaced a WRT3200ACM that failed on me. This Cudy router is easy to use and it integrated into my home network without a problem. Just follow the instructions when setting it up. I purchased this router as it was advertised as allowing OpenVPN. It does and the interface is extremely easy to invoke. Just follow the instructions when doing the initial setup.This little router is worth every penny you spend on it.

UPDATE: I received an email reply from Cudy technical support a couple of business days after sending my inquiry. They very helpfully provided the steps required to configure the router in failover mode according to my requirements. The process, while not intuitive, was easy to understand and execute. They also provided what appeared to be a subsection of a user manual, that covered the WAN settings.Editorial comment: I've tried a couple of multi-WAN routers, and the failover function consistently seems cryptic / non-intuitive to implement, or poorly documented. I don't see why it has to be so difficult. I used to use a MoFi4500 that had a simple either/or configuration page: Load Balancing or Failover. I only replaced that device because its Ethernet ports topped out at 100 Mbps.Original review: I just purchased one of these on the basis of the review written by Rascal-of-renown on 7/8/2023: "I have two ISPs - one via cellular, one via cable company. I wanted cableco as 100% bandwidth for primary ISP, with 100% of the cellular bandwidth as a backup, and to work FULLY AUTOMATICALLY."With this Cudy R700 multi-WAN router I was able to do just that, at an inexpensive price compared to more expensive multi-WAN routers that probably have features that I did not need for this basic task."My two ISPs are Starlink and cellular. The router reports both WAN inputs and Load Balancing connected, but I don't see any methodology in the browser interface to switch from Load Balancing to Failover, and there's no mention in the included documentation or company support website (that I could find). I've sent a message to Cudy technical support, but no response yet. Rascal-of-renown or anyone else, how does one implement Failover in this router?If I can't get this sorted and running reliably in Failover mode, I'll likely return it and replace it with a multi-WAN gigabit router that explicitly documents failover functionality.Otherwise, it's a nice little unit with a great browser interface.

Amazing performance for the price. It works like a tank. It is rugged, feels like it should have been more expensive and very easy to implement. Mine sits between my internet router and my streaming device, so that I can enjoy streaming content from anywhere! Accepted OpenVPN profile and just cranks. Five stars!