I guess my ISP uses some subpar hardware because the connection keeps dropping at peak hours. I want to implement a failover system without having to buy some expensive router which I would not be able to justify with my normal usage.
Wanted to know some other ways how people do it .
Change ISP
Already did it once . No ISP is my area is 100% reliable.
This.
There are two fiber to the home providers in central Mississippi: AT&T and Cspire. As far as I know, Cspire is a Mississippi only ISP.
Before I moved 2 years ago, the Cspire connection was rock-solid. It never went offline.
After we moved, I could wake up on any random day and Cspire would be down for half a day. I guess I can’t complain too much since their synchronous 1GB fiber service is $85/mo, but when you have a teenager that will worry you to death about the internet being offline… well you get the idea.
So I added ATT 1GB synchronous fiber for $80/mo. I like the Cspire Ethernet handoff better than using the ATT modem (even with IP passthru). The ATT service has been stable since adding it 18 months ago. My router (EdgeRouter 4) easily does load-balancing, so I’ve kept both services.
No more downtime, I have a dedicated UPS for the network gear (separate from servers) and I can keep internet up for 8+ hours after a power outage.
Standard ISP and cradlepoint AER 3000 with Verizon and ATT back up
Go outside and do yardwork. Play with the dog. Read a book. Wait for the ISP to fix their shit.
Main ISP is fiber, house is part of HOA that has cable internet included, so that is my failover.
Main is 2gbps symmetrical
Failover is 300 down, 10 up
The only time my network is down is when the power is out
I simply fall back to using 4G from another provider than fiber channel.
Wait, one’s supposed to have a network failover solution?
not for hobby homelabs I guess , but more of a wfh setup.
“Sorry internets out”
“Gonna take a 4 hour lunch, internets out” lol
DSL main, cheap little LTE modem via USB as a fallback. Both are connected to my OPNsense as a gateway group. Failover happens after 5s of full packet loss (and a bunch of less aggressive failover conditions, latency etc.). That of course changes my public IPv4 address, so yes this drops existing connections. Not a big deal for most stuff, Netflix reconnects quickly enough that this isn’t even noticeable. For the stuff where the connection can’t drop like that, I run a VPN tunnel on each of the two uplinks to a small relay box with a static IP sitting in a datacenter. When DSL fails, the traffic is routed through the other VPN link but comes out of the relay box with the same public IP.
Do you have any tutorials that you followed for this type of configuration?
2.5Gbps main uplink and 1Gbps failover uplink, pfsense, and a 5G wireless modem in case of emergency or nuclear fallout
I run dual 4G WAN anyway because of latency and bandwidth, failover was just a bonus.
I got like 2mbps on cable, and I’m pretty sure the line is now actually broken/severed (tree fell on it) and they just never bothered fixing it because nobody uses it anyway.
I have a Rutx12 router that has 2 cellular modems, if the WAN link fails it will route via 2 load balanced 4g connections. It works great in my hack rack and means my lab is completely mobile with no breaks in connectivity
This is the way
pfSense virtual router connect to a FTTP NTD and a Huawei LTE 4G router
I have 5G LTE modem with unlimited data plan on UPS. It is not bad ISP here but power outages…
Firewalla. 🤷
Cox Cable modem (metered) and Verizon LTE load balanced with my firewall appliance.