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 .

      • idl3mind@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        8 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.

  • BoopJoop01@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 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.

  • TinoOG@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

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

  • dragnucs@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    I simply fall back to using 4G from another provider than fiber channel.

  • hiddenasian42@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    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.

  • apr911@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    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).

  • will592@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

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

  • blami@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

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