Homelab

Cellular router with failover.

I run two pfsense routers and use CARP. 1gbps/50 cable modem with 5 static ips available on both pfsenses, and a 1 gbps symmetrical FTTH with 1 static ip also available on both pfsenses (but uses CARP to know which is “live” - it uses pppoe, which makes this possible with 1 ip).

My current single point of failure is my single main switch. Works very well though. I’ve had 100% uptime for over a year!

My EdgeRouter 4 does a good job of load-balancing two internet connections. Just a couple of PBR lines in the config and it was working.

I have gigabit cable and fail-over to VDSL2.

I use a UDM-Pro with dual WAN configured. I previously used PfSense with load balancing and feel it did it better than the UDM-Pro, but there are other benefits to the UniFi ecosystem.

I just literally pay for two ISPs over different mediums, i have a lowish tier cable modem connection and then a sync gig connection over fiber. The latter is my primary, with the cable as a hot standby in my EdgeRouter 6P (Dual-WAN with failover only)

It's worked great the times there has been an outage. I work from home so I just chalk this up to the cost of saving a commute.

My network failover setup is kinda complicated, im using a Prepaid LTE here in Philippines and use it as my backup internet.

My aim is to get that prepaid LTE data to auto subscribe to prepaid mobile data when my primary internet is down. First its going to auto subscribe to 5 pesos / 500mb allocation for 1 hour, if for some reason the internet is still down for 1 hour its going to auto subscribe to 99pesos / 8gb allocation, luckily that data allocation also comes with unlimited service of your choice, I choose youtube because thats what we use most, so that 8gb of data is actually more than enough for the household to get going.

all of that made possible with automation using Home Assistant, and the LTE router I got is a Huawei B312-939 and is compatible with Huawei LTE integration, and all the auto subscription automation are done via Send SMS call service via Huawei LTE integration. I also use home assistant to basically stop docker services on my NAS that is going to potentially consume a lot of bandwidth (like the transmission) while our primary internet is down and also start them back as soon as the primary internet goes back online.

And to maintain this setup, all I need is to top-up my prepaid lte sim with 3000 pesos worth (around 60USD) of credit and that's good for a year, there are times in a year that internet is reliable for the entire year so that 3000 pesos is untouched and will be used for the next year but I still need to top-up at least 5 pesos to get the SIM to not deactivated due to inactivity.

Go outside and do yardwork. Play with the dog. Read a book. Wait for the ISP to fix their shit.

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).