SD-WAN for Internet ONLY

[RickyS]

Hey everyone,  we are a school and have a 50 Mbps DSL circuit which is starting to become taxed due to increased online learning.  I am planning on adding an additional 50 Mbps DSL circuit in parallel to the one we have now. (Our ISP doesn't support higher speeds on a single circuit in our building).  

I am using a Meraki MX-64 appliance.  If I was to configure WAN2 with the second internet connection and enable load balancing under the SD-WAN settings, would that allow us to utilize both circuits simultaneously OR does its till work as a Primary/Backup link where second link comes up only if the primary drops?

We do not do any kind of VPNs and this is strictly for web traffic ONLY.

Thank you in advance for your help.

[ww]

Yes. More info here https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Firewall_and_Traffic_Shaping/MX_Load_Balancing_and_Flow_Preferen...

[cmr]

Individual conversations will only use one link but you can use two links up to the max throughput of the device (250Mb/s in your case).

[WillN]

Yes, enabling load balancing will push both connections into an Active-Active state. Try to ensure you set your uplink speeds correctly as the load balancing feature will use the delta between WAN 1 and WAN 2s settings as a ratio for traffic management.

Example
WAN 1 is 100Mbs
WAN 2 is 50Mbs

That's a 2:1 ratio and thus 2/3rds of traffic will be pushed normally down WAN 1 and WAN 2 will take the remainder (unless there are other instructions to put specific types of traffic down one connection, or there's an outage.)

Meraki wont split session traffic over 2 uplinks as well, so a voice call or download/upload will only use one connection at any one time, and not an aggregate of both. E.G. it doesn't make your speed 150Mbs but gives you that in throughput.