this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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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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[–] Steeven9@alien.top 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] uvish66@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Already did it once . No ISP is my area is 100% reliable.

[–] idl3mind@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] Dus1988@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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

[–] duckwebs@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Edgerouter 4 with 1 Gb symmetric fiber primary and cable 500/20 backup. Network is setup so most media devices that are down-only come through the backup so I have regular verification that it's functioning. Essentially two ports in the house supply separate networks, each with a dedicated outside line, but set up to fail over to the other outside line.

I thought they had completely dropped the Edgerouter line, but I just popped over and it looks like they're actually in stock and reasonably priced. If I had to replace the ER4, I'd probably go to an ER12, which as far as I can tell is an ER4 with a built in switch (the ER4 doesn't act as a switch between ports - each port has its own address space).

[–] NoSoulsINC@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

The only time my network is down is when the power is out

[–] Missing_Space_Cadet@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

100% up time obviously

[–] blami@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I have 5G LTE modem with unlimited data plan on UPS. It is not bad ISP here but power outages…

[–] CombJelliesAreCool@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

My router is x86 linux, so I can just usb tether to my phone like a frugal king.

[–] dro159@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] Remarkable_Housing61@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

One of those travel routers sharing the connection from my neighbors Xfinity Hotspot ($20/mnth) as my second uplink to my main fiber

[–] planetwords@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] 1911ACP@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] Recent_Penalty7063@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Fail over? Cry and smoke some weed until it comes back on.

[–] RoundWhereasSquare@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] EuphoricHacker@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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!

[–] kloeckwerx@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Firewalla. 🤷

[–] Kltpzyxmm@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

A few days in the mountains

[–] fifteengetsyoutwenty@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago
[–] will592@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Cox Cable modem (metered) and Verizon LTE load balanced with my firewall appliance.

[–] Impossible_Shoulder6@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Pen and paper.

[–] TinoOG@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

2.5Gbps main uplink and 1Gbps failover uplink, pfsense, and a 5G wireless modem in case of emergency or nuclear fallout

[–] BoopJoop01@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] siverpro@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wait, one’s supposed to have a network failover solution?

[–] uvish66@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

not for hobby homelabs I guess , but more of a wfh setup.

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[–] hiddenasian42@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] krissovo@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] alias4007@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

This is the way

[–] _EuroTrash_@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Main fiber link with one ISP and cable modem with a different ISP. I'm lucky enough to live at an intersection where both options are available - and the two links are literally buried under two different roads.

[–] JLee50@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

5gbps fiber and then a 5G business internet backup failover via UniFi UDM-Pro, all on UPS with a standby Generac. We can take a power and ISP outage simultaneously and have a second or so connectivity hiccup.

[–] rickman1011@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Funny! I have an almost identical setup, 5G fiber, 5G Home internet, udm pro on UPS. Instead of standby I have a big lithium setup and a manual inverter generator to top it off if need be. It has been great to have.

[–] JLee50@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Nice! All else being equal I’d rather have a big lithium setup (would tie nicely with my solar) but the house came with a generator, so the free generator won lol

[–] Busy_Reporter4017@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Sounds very inexpensive for a home user.

[–] murdaBot@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I've got a dual-wan UXG-Pro and am lucky enough to have two 1Gbps providers (fiber + cable), plus an employer who reimburses me for both. I have a small wired T-Mobile LTE MiFi device as backup, but never needed it. ($20 a month + usage over 2GB)

[–] MrJacks0n@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I have a cheap hotspot that I use for fail over of a couple things like home automation and remote access. Not enough data to do a full fail over but keeping a couple things going is enough.

[–] Giannis_Dor@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

get a mikrotik they are good for the price and setup recursive routing so what I'm using right now is 2 wans or you could use 1 wan and 1 4g or plug a phone on the usb port and turn on usb tethering so basically recursive routing checks if a host is up on a line say isp 1 pings to see if 1.1.1.1 is up if not switch to isp 2 isp 1 is my own line and isp 2 is my apartment's shared internet connection that has unstable speeds but for failover, it's better than nothing

[–] taxigrandpa@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

try increasing your speed. we had an issue once like this, turns out one of our systems was flooding the connection and it would reset. Once we increased the speed the bottleneck went away and it quit happening

[–] uvish66@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I have a pretty minimal setup , Few smart devices , phones, computers and a desktop server. I don't think of any of those devices creating issues.

[–] SirLagz@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

pfSense virtual router connect to a FTTP NTD and a Huawei LTE 4G router

[–] auron_py@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I've got two ISP connections that go to a Juniper SRX300, this is totally unnecessary and overkill but I got the router for free from work (I actually have a few of them).

[–] Poncho_Via6six7@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Standard ISP and cradlepoint AER 3000 with Verizon and ATT back up

[–] identicalBadger@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

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

[–] kookykoalajon@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I have T-Mobiles Internet @Home, and CTL fiber both routed into my OpenWrt router, configured to do fail over

My primary is 200/200 fiber, and uses 5G as failover.

I host my VPN on a small vps, with nginx proxy manager, it routes my service’s back to my router using wireguard

My openwrt router is a Pi 4 operating as a “router on a stick” currently, I use an Aruba 2920 switch to achieve this but can also be done with usb Ethernet adapters.

I hear MicoTik has some good cheap hardware and is extremely powerful router capable of the same things at reasonable price, but my openwrt has worked for me for many years.

[–] CTRL1@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Your asking for redundancy. You plug in a second wan connection and configure a failover.

[–] Ok_Cartographer_6086@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago
[–] -SPOF@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

A Raspberry Pi with two network interfaces (one can be a USB-to-Ethernet or USB-to-WiFi adapter) can be set up as a failover router. Just write scripts to check the internet connectivity regularly and switch between connections as needed.

[–] AlexisColoun@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

A pile of shame, consisting of all the books I bought and haven't read yet.

[–] lndependentRabbit@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

OPNsense running on a 4 port Protectli. I use 2 ports for WAN connections with load balancing. I have it set to failover to using just one if there is packet loss or high latency on the other.

[–] Mother_Construction2@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I’ve wanted one for a long time but don’t have time to deploy it.

So no fall over for mine. 💀

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