Internet Connection Failover

H

Hallis

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 26, 2001
Messages
4,556
Ok Guys here's the skinny.

I've got 2 internet connections at my house. I live in a fairly rural area with no cable or DSL so they are both wireless. Motorola Air Canopy type hardware. One of them is ~6mbt and the other is 1.5mbt. I keep the 1.5 mbt one around because it's been very reliable. And while the 6mbt is not down a whole lot it bugs me to have to click ethernet cables back and fourth between the routers. (each connection has its own Linksys router)

What I was looking for would be some way to set up some kind of automatic failover for when the fast connection goes down. The only network hardware ive got is those 2 routers, and a Dell Powerconnect 2724 Managed switch, I could probably set up an Untangle or pfsense box if i really needed to but would rather avoid adding much more hardware into the mix. although I suppose a little 1U low power atom box wouldn't be out of the question.

I apologies in advance if this all sounds like half complete sentences and bad spelling. I'm still trying to wake up.

Shane
 
pfSense is going to be the way to go. Throw it on a little Atom D525 box with 4GB of RAM and an extra NIC for a total of 3, and then setup the WAN failover. I have one of these boxes in a customer site and it works rather well. They are using 3G as their failover through a USB modem, but even still in the two outages they had it took about 30 seconds for the box to realize it was down and flip to the 3G stick.

Untangle may be able to do this as well, however I have no expirence with it.
 
I'll check it all out. I think I might even have a spare Linksys router to test the DD-WRT on.

I don't need balancing as much as failover. Otherwise one of those nice Coyote Systems Load balancers would have looked SWEET in my rack. I should have bought one when i had the chance anyway. :(
 
Another option is to find a used Peplink or maybe possibly buy a new one. You can get rid of both routers and only use one.
 
Striker109 said:
Another option is to find a used Peplink or maybe possibly buy a new one. You can get rid of both routers and only use one.
Click to expand...

Even used those appear to be quite expensive. But i'll keep that option on the back burner for when some money comes my way.
 
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