Automated failover for a home lab?

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Andrew_Carr

Member
Mar 18, 2022
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First of all, it's been a long time since I delved into networking so bear with me. My internet connection here is pretty unreliable (comcast), and recently was going out 1-2 days / month for up to 24-48 hours at a time. Typically it was stupid things like the maintenance tech screwing with something and not putting it back right, or rain causing issues. Anyway, I picked up a cellular wifi hotspot and was wanting to use it as a backup in case the main internet connection goes down, and then switch back to the main internet line once it's back up. Does anyone know what this would be called or how to set it up? I haven't come across a whole lot online but I'm probably just searching for the wrong terms. I just have a basic netgear orbi router setup connected to a few switches that then connect to my computers, but I have a beagleboard black lying around and could setup a new router if necessary I guess.
 
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Tom5051

Active Member
Jan 18, 2017
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easiest way would be to setup the cellular device as a 2nd gateway, then set your clients to use the main gateway with a metric of 1 and the cellular as secondary with a metric of 2. They will try the first gateway and if not working, use the secondary.
 
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Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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My Comcast internet situation is just like yours. One Christmas , I was without Comcast internet over 1 month.

Now, Take your phone outside of your house, check and see if you able to connect to neighbor's Xfinity Wifi hotspot.

If answer is yes,
set up a Access Point as client to Xfinity wifi hotspot , such as DDWRT / OpenWrt router ,
In my case,
I have 3 Ubiquiti NBE-M5-16 High-Performance airMAX Bridge NanoBeam M5 16dBi AP postiion in different direction.
Even cheaper version of Ubiquiti NanoStation will work

Each connection is capable of speed @25mbps.
If all the hotspot are using the same wifi channel, then you only have 25mbps.

Hint,
I was able to buy NBE-M5-16 @ $35 to $50 each