Look for a good router that works if your internet goes down so you can keep talking even when things break.
Look for a good router that works if your internet goes down so you can keep talking even when things break.
G'day folks. Here is hopefully a simple question. I currently have internet at 1Gb speed that costs nothing much, but since I work from home, any break hurts my day. Sadly, my ISP has gone out of business. It seems like during the switch-over, there are too many breaks on their new network side. One thing I wanted to try was setting up a failover setup so internet keeps going even if one connection goes down. Since I am pretty new to networking, I'm struggling to find good hardware recommendations because consumer stuff isn't common for this kind of job. Anyway: I need a switch or router that can set up a backup link that kicks in automatically when the first one fails and cuts back on it again when everything comes back online. In the future, maybe I'll want load balancing, but not right now. My main line is 1Gb and my backup is 300Mb both using ethernet ports without fiber optics. Oh wait, I also have a personal router already so if an unmanaged switch works for what I need, that would be super cool to use it too. Thanks anyone who helps out here!
Getting the hardware set up isn't that hard, mostly because many routers come with dual WAN options and even most Asus routers work like that too. But the real trouble is figuring out what "down" actually means. If you unplug the ethernet cable from the router, it will often switch quickly, but usually the modem stays on while data stops flowing completely or worse, just a lot of data disappears. Some gadgets try to figure they're online by sending pings, and that works kinda well for checking status. Real business setups use special protocols to handle this, though that's not an option unless you work for a big company. You also have another issue you probably can't fix easily. Switching between...
Do you need automatic failback? It happens less often. One way things break is very easy. How comfortable are you with setting up networks? Failover isn't always a simple GUI setup. MikroTik routers can handle failover. Business class routers can handle failover. Ubiquiti Edgerouters and Ubiquiti UniFI DreamMachine PRO can handle failover (but they don't currently support load balancing).
I feel pretty confident but still really know about less stuff than I should. I built up my own home server which took me a long time to figure out, and now that I got the hang of it, this whole thing is brand new for me. My internet provider has some problems, so using them as an excuse helps because I want to try it anyway. I've already been working with low-level network stuff on my own house before, too. I even looked a lot into how things like failover and load balancing work, but I'm not 100% sure yet until I get to play around with the real thing. The biggest problem is finding something small that has both two WAN ports AND those automatic failover features, which are very rare to find. Even if they aren't there, I wouldn't mind getting something bigger instead or just looking into a server rack even though I don't have one right now yet.
Tomato firmware was able to handle multi-WAN since 2016, and DD-WRT has supported dual-WAN with failover using commands or a script for about 15 years now (just set any LAN port as WAN2). You might already have a router that supports such third-party firmware.
Getting the hardware is pretty simple. You can find routers that let you talk to two different internet networks at once. Almost all Asus routers do it, but some TP-Link routers also work. The real trouble is figuring out what "down" actually means. If you pull the Ethernet cable from the router, it will switch on its own in a second. But usually, your modem stays powered on and keeps sending data. That's not good; lots of data just disappears instead. Some gadgets try to guess if everything is working by using ping, but that method only works part of the time. A real business link uses special rules to fix this mess, but that feature isn't available for most people unless they work for a big company. You also face another problem: when you change ISPs, your IP address changes too. This means your stuff gets dropped and you'll have to log back into all those services again. Some things rely on cookies to remember you, so they might break. Other apps will even show you stupid captcha messages because it looks like someone is trying to hack them. Solving this only requires fancy VPN solutions that hide the fact that you're using two different IPs from your main connection. So here are the choices: Option 1 is just swapping out the Ethernet cable when things go wrong. Option 2 involves configuring your slower connection with a temporary IP, like turning off DHCP on the second router and plugging a cable between their LAN ports. Now both internet connections are active at once, but they will mostly use the main one because of how the computers choose which to talk to. You can now use ROUTE DELETE and ROUTE ADD commands to make your computer think it's connecting to 192.168.1.2 instead of 192.168.1.1. That basically works like changing cables with software tricks. If you want to be fancy, you can split your internet between both lines by sending different things to each connection. For example, you could watch Netflix on line 2 while everything else goes on line 1. Maybe you could write a tiny program that pings an IP address and then automatically changes the router's commands if needed. But here is another problem: using two different internet connections means you have different IPs for each one. You need to be extra careful if you try to use both at the same time. A common example people on this forum understand well is this: if you want to play an online game, you might log in with your main connection but start playing inside a lobby on the second connection. The game company will see that you are using two different networks and decide you are trying to break the rules. There have been times when companies banned people just because of such mistakes or stupidity.