Gigabit Ethernet WAN ports support cable or DSL broadband connections. Models with multiple WAN ports can operate in either a load-balancing or fail-over configuration. The load-balancing configuration enables maximum throughput by utilizing WAN connections to distribute traffic across two broadband connections, possibly with different ISP providers. Alternatively, a second WAN port may be configured as a failover connection in case the primary connection fails, for another method of providing high reliability.