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 .
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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.
I simply fall back to using 4G from another provider than fiber channel.
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?
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
Unifi UDM PRO with a GL.iNet GL-X3000 (Spitz AX) 5G NR AX3000 Cellular Gateway Router for failover on the backup link. Separate providers for primary and backup. No MVNO.
We’re almost in 2024. I’ve been on the Internet since 91. Today’s telco/network equipment come with error reporting via alarms / data pushed to centralized tools that usually highlight issues. If your ISP is subpart and can’t fix it’s network, can’t you switch to another ISP?
Also, have you done your homework and positive the issue doesn’t come from any of your equipment? Why not open a ticket w/ the ISP with all the proof on hand? Are they aware?
If you’ve done all of that work, that they are aware and “sit & do nothing”, it’s fair to post the name of that ISP right here!
Your asking for redundancy. You plug in a second wan connection and configure a failover.
I don’t need failover at home. If I lose internet for a day, I’ll tether with my phone, go to a coffee shop or the office. Nothing in my homelab will die for lack of internet either
If I absolutely must keep working and a “sorry internet is down will be mostly unavailable” wont suffice for work, I will tether to my work phone… or in an absolute pinch, my personal phone.
There’s also a starbucks and a few other free wifi hotspots I can go to within a short drive or even walking distance.
I suppose I could bring in a second ISP but I would really only do that if the maximum speed I could get from my ISP was too low and/or a faster speed from the ISP was similar in price (preferably less than but possibly a little more expensive) to doing a similar speed using 2 ISPs.
Where I am, my internet costs me $70/month for gigabit… its their highest tier and their lower tiers suck (100mbps for $55 and 400mbps for $60) but I dont really need more than that… if I wanted more, I could switch providers and go to Comcast and get 1.2Gbps for $85 per month but I’d probably bring in either Comcast’s 75mbps tier for $20 or 200mbps for $35 first.
Technically it’d cost a bit more at $105+tax vs Comcast’s $85 but with Comcast Id have to pay $30 for unlimited bandwidth or $25 with their rented hardware since I somewhat regularly exceed 1.2TB of data transfer per month.
My current provider has no cap, is more reliable in my area and there are less restrictions on my their network (e.g. in addition to the lack of bandwidth usage cap/charge, I can and do run multiple public IPs and I have no port restrictions though admittedly the handful of ports comcast blocks wouldnt really impact me) and it would provide me redundancy for only a slight increase in cost (actually slightly less when you tack on the bandwidth fees with or without renting their hardware which I absolutely despise)…
My setup would probably utilize a Vyos VM as an edge router since its how Im currently connected but really many off the shelf home routers will support converting one of the LAN ports to a redundant WAN port, especially if you can use WRT firmware variants (Tomato, DD-wrt, OpenWRT, etc).
My router is x86 linux, so I can just usb tether to my phone like a frugal king.
One of those travel routers sharing the connection from my neighbors Xfinity Hotspot ($20/mnth) as my second uplink to my main fiber
I use an cheap EdgeRouterX to detect failover events then route all traffic out secondary WAN (Teltonika 4G) and I have a nice failover script where I get notified via pushover of the events.
A $30 GL.iNET Opal router tethered to my cell phone. Plugged a cable from a LAN port of the Opal to the WAN or WAN2 of my pfSense router.
If the Opal is plugged in WAN2 all the time you could have pfSense do automatic failover that is seamless.
Fail over? Cry and smoke some weed until it comes back on.
Mikrotik do inexpensive routers and their RouterOS is wonderful.
It can even do connection-based load balancing over two connections, although I don’t have the mastery to set this up yet.