After spending way too many hours troubleshooting my home network, I wanted to share what finally worked in case it helps someone else.

My setup:

• Spectrum Gigabit (Primary)
• 2x T-Mobile Home Internet connections (Backup)
• Omada Controller
• ER605 v2 (soon upgrading to an ER707-M2)
• Home Assistant, Node-RED, dozens of IoT devices, cameras, etc.

Like many people, my first thought was:

>

In practice...that caused more headaches than it solved.

The problems I kept seeing

• Random browsing quirks
• Existing sessions behaving strangely when WANs changed
• The Omada Controller occasionally becoming unreachable during failover
• Devices that didn't like their outbound IP changing
• Home Assistant integrations acting inconsistently

Nothing was "broken," but everything felt unpredictable.

What I changed

Instead of relying on Load Balancing and Link Backup, I rebuilt the network around:

• VLANs
• Policy Routing
• Static device placement

Now each group of devices uses the WAN that makes the most sense.

Examples:

• Home devices → Spectrum
• IoT devices → Dedicated WAN
• Kids VLAN → Separate policy
• Management traffic → Controlled independently

Instead of asking the router to constantly decide where traffic should go, I tell it exactly where each type of traffic belongs.

The result

The difference has honestly been night and day.

• Browsing is consistently fast.
• My Omada Controller no longer disappears during ISP events.
• Home Assistant has become much more reliable.
• IoT devices stay on the same ISP instead of unexpectedly switching.
• Failover behavior is far more predictable because only the devices I want to move actually move.

Even while Spectrum has continued having occasional issues, the network itself has remained stable.

My takeaway

Load Balancing and Link Backup are great features, but I think many home users immediately enable them because they assume "more WANs = more balancing."

In reality, if your goal is stability rather than squeezing every last Mbps from multiple ISPs, a design centered around VLANs and Policy Routing may produce a much better experience.

You're trading dynamic routing decisions for deterministic ones.

For me, that has made all the difference.

I'm curious if anyone else has gone down this path. Has anyone else moved away from traditional Multi-WAN Load Balancing in favor of Policy Routing?