4g broadband failover

[Maker]

We've just started a new broadband contract with EE, they talked us into paying an extra ten pounds a month for a "4G backup", which we understood would be the same network connection, when the wired broadband goes down (As it often does here), an LTE connection would take over and the same Wi-Fi and ethernet connection would continue working, seemed like a bargain. What they actually sent was yet another new router, even bigger and more obnoxious than the last, a booster, and a stupid little wireless travel router with a 2gb sim, definitely not worth the extra £10 a month. I see they do make LTE home routers, but looking around I can't seem to find one with both LTE antennae and a wired broadband port, you can only have one or the other, so I'm thinking even if we do get them to send out a home router, it'll function the same as this travel thing, but mains powered.



I understand what most people call a "router" is actually a modem, router, network switch and WAP all rolled into one, and I know you can't have two routers on one network. What I'm wondering is, can you have two modems on one router? One normal ADLS modem, and a second LTE one as a backup? I think that's what we're after but I'm not sure it exists.

I'm guessing if it is possible, you can't do it with EE's hardware, we'd have to buy new kit, linux PC as a router, etc?

 

[awemawson]

My BT router gives me 17-18 mb/s on copper but falls back to an EE 4G connection (via an extra box) if the line fails. On the EE 4G I'm getting 30 mb/s so guess what, I've unplugged the phone line

 

[gaz1]

you can via this

Combine Multiple Internet Connections to Boost Internet Speed

How to combine many internet connections to boost Internet speed. Get more bandwidth on your Windows computer by using multiple connections at once.

techwelkin.com

 

[MattF]

Have a look at Teltonika routers. Not sure what specific options they have in their range.

 

[ajlelectronics]

My proper 4G router has two Ethernet sockets on it. Although you couldn't (as far as I know*) run both modems in parallel on the same wired subnet, you could easily swap from one to the other by unplugging / plugging.

* The 4G router would of course be useable as an alternate WiFi network simultaneously to the landline provided LAN.

 

[m_c]

Teltonika RUT routers can be configured to provide LTE failover if your usual internet connection fails.
Draytek do combined ADSL/LTE routers with failover configurable.

 

[daedalusminos]

I have the D-Link 953, it will switch between an external wired broadband router or its own internal 4G modem to maintain connectivity

 

[Maker]

Phoned EE and it seems we're stuck with this portable thing, that extra tenner a month is for the whole "Smart wifi" system, if we don't want the 4g thing we'll also lose the special new router and the booster. We can ask for two more boosters if we need them (Of course we need them ). They say they'll put 250gb on the travel router if there's ever a fault with the broadband, I'm not sure if that means as soon as it drops out for five minutes or just if they know there's a big serious outage, like if the copper cable to the village gets nicked (Again!).

I'll see how it goes.

 

[droopsnoot]

and I know you can't have two routers on one network.

In isolation, that's not strictly true. You could have two routers on the same network so that some of your devices use a different broadband connection but can still talk to each other, or for all sorts of other reasons.

Probably doesn't matter in your scenario, though. My inner pedant was just saying that there's no reason you cannot have two routers on the same network.

That little rectangular box in the front of your photo looks like the Mi-fi box I've just stopped using with Three, a Huawei E5573B, though lots of their models look identical. I mainly stopped using it because I'm in a poor signal area, and the only way it connects is if I balance it on an open window, which wasn't fun a month or two ago. I always had it connected via USB to my PC, so it was effectively mains powered.

 

[Maker]

I just noticed in the instructions the power consumption is given in watts per second, does that mean the wattage increases the longer it's plugged in? It's been running for two days so the router must be drawing about 2.5MW by now!



I was initially quite scathing of "Smart wifi", seems like a buzzword to charge more but the new router is definitely better, 5GHz signal is much stronger and things hand over to the booster very well. The only thing still connected on 2.4 is a Raspberry Pi which can't see 5 gig, but the booster has an ethernet port so I'll probably just plug it in soon anyway. I think I'll get another booster for the garage, just because I can.

 

[aesmith]

I've set us up the other way round, as we get much better speed on 4G than we do from ADSL. So our home network runs normally on 4G, but uses the ADSL if that fails. Networking is my trade so I was quite happy with the challenge of getting multiple devices to work together. We currently have a main router that does the home wireless and all the Ethernet connections, then a separate LTE router for the 4G connection, both these devices are "Mikrotik" which are very fully featured. The third device is our old ADSL router now demoted to backup duty and connected back to the main router.

For a more normal end user, and all-in-one router is preferable, as it will deal with the failover of its own accord, as it will know when the broadband is down. There are lots of DSL routers that can do 4G backup via a USB port, I am not sure if I've seen one that has a SIM card built in.

 

[Kayos]

I have a 4g dongle I use for working remotely, long train journey coming up so will be using it rather than the train WiFi, work laptop won't connect to that kind of network

The network is called "5g Covid Test Mast"

 

[Stupoty]

You can get routers with multiple connection options , the basic ADSL or coaxial connection plus a usb port for a data dongle backup seems quite common.

Stu