Every so often our broadband connection, provided by BT, has a bit of a wobble. Yesterday was one of those days, and after it was down for a couple of hours I gave BT a call to see if there were any problems at their end. One long call later on a Friday lunchtime, and the customer service rep had booked a technician to go out to the exchange and take a look... on Monday afternoon. As he explained, the technicians don't work on the weekend, but if the system sorted itself out he would be happy for me to phone back and cancel the booking. (As it happened, the broadband came back at 5.30pm, and has been up ever since.)
Working from home is a regular thing for us, and a day without broadband is a major headache. So I looked at options for increasing the resiliency of our internet connection, and decided to add a cellular modem as a backup to our ADSL modem. On the opposite side of the gorge from our house is the cell base station for the town, which was upgraded to 4G last year. So there should be plenty of bandwidth available from the cellular connection, if the landline connection goes down.
As we've been having broadband issues for a while, we've long since ditched the BT-supplied Home Hub 4 and have been using a DrayTek Vigor 2860ac ADSL2+ router. This has enabled us to get the maximum speed from our connection, and has plenty of manual configuration for other services such as VPN, IP binding, QoS, etc.
The Vigor 2860 also has load balancing and auto-failover for multiple WANs. By adding a USB cellular modem, it is possible to configure the Vigor 2860 to switch over to that when it detects the ADSL has gone down. So I bought a ZTE MF823 and EE PAYG data SIM, and hooked them up to the Vigor 2860.
Within the Vigor 2860 administrative interface (firmware 3.8.4.2_BT from 7-Dec-2016) the USB modem needs to be enabled.
The Active Mode is set to 'Failover' and Load Balance in unchecked, as I only want the cellular connection used when there's a WAN failure, specifically when WAN1 (BT Broadband) goes down.
The next thing is to set up the USB cellular modem itself.
The Vigor 2860 supports the MF823 when in DHCP mode, as opposed to PPP mode.
The only configuration information the MF823 needs is the APN for the EE network, which is 'everywhere'. With the MF823 configured, the Vigor 2860 reports that it has a potential 42Mbps symmetric internet connection.
Which rather puts our ADSL2+ speeds of 20Mbps/1Mbps to shame.
So the final step is to test that the Vigor 2860 switches over from the ADSL connection to the cellular connection, and back again, when the BT landline goes down. Disconnecting the RJ11 modem cable from the BT master socket triggers the failover behaviour in the Vigor 2860, and after a short delay as the MF823 connects to the network the internet is restored.
There is a break in the internet connection, so this isn't a seamless failover setup. The Vigor 2860 could be setup with the MF823 always on, but with load balancing rules sending all the traffic down the ADSL connection. When the ADSL goes down there wouldn't be the delay while the MF823 connects to the network. However it would still confuse the hell out of any VoIP and streaming connections as the packet routing transitioned from ADSL to cellular, and keeping the MF823 permanently connected would slowly eat through its data allowance. So on balance, I'm happy with the small disruption in connection with the current setup.
(I also note that Openreach is now accepting orders for fibre connections from the Ironbridge WNIB exchange! We're connected to 'cabinet 2', which is currently is in the Build phase, and the guidance is that connections to homes should be available within 5 months.)
Working from home is a regular thing for us, and a day without broadband is a major headache. So I looked at options for increasing the resiliency of our internet connection, and decided to add a cellular modem as a backup to our ADSL modem. On the opposite side of the gorge from our house is the cell base station for the town, which was upgraded to 4G last year. So there should be plenty of bandwidth available from the cellular connection, if the landline connection goes down.
As we've been having broadband issues for a while, we've long since ditched the BT-supplied Home Hub 4 and have been using a DrayTek Vigor 2860ac ADSL2+ router. This has enabled us to get the maximum speed from our connection, and has plenty of manual configuration for other services such as VPN, IP binding, QoS, etc.
The Vigor 2860 also has load balancing and auto-failover for multiple WANs. By adding a USB cellular modem, it is possible to configure the Vigor 2860 to switch over to that when it detects the ADSL has gone down. So I bought a ZTE MF823 and EE PAYG data SIM, and hooked them up to the Vigor 2860.
Within the Vigor 2860 administrative interface (firmware 3.8.4.2_BT from 7-Dec-2016) the USB modem needs to be enabled.
The Active Mode is set to 'Failover' and Load Balance in unchecked, as I only want the cellular connection used when there's a WAN failure, specifically when WAN1 (BT Broadband) goes down.
The next thing is to set up the USB cellular modem itself.
The Vigor 2860 supports the MF823 when in DHCP mode, as opposed to PPP mode.
The only configuration information the MF823 needs is the APN for the EE network, which is 'everywhere'. With the MF823 configured, the Vigor 2860 reports that it has a potential 42Mbps symmetric internet connection.
Which rather puts our ADSL2+ speeds of 20Mbps/1Mbps to shame.
So the final step is to test that the Vigor 2860 switches over from the ADSL connection to the cellular connection, and back again, when the BT landline goes down. Disconnecting the RJ11 modem cable from the BT master socket triggers the failover behaviour in the Vigor 2860, and after a short delay as the MF823 connects to the network the internet is restored.
There is a break in the internet connection, so this isn't a seamless failover setup. The Vigor 2860 could be setup with the MF823 always on, but with load balancing rules sending all the traffic down the ADSL connection. When the ADSL goes down there wouldn't be the delay while the MF823 connects to the network. However it would still confuse the hell out of any VoIP and streaming connections as the packet routing transitioned from ADSL to cellular, and keeping the MF823 permanently connected would slowly eat through its data allowance. So on balance, I'm happy with the small disruption in connection with the current setup.
(I also note that Openreach is now accepting orders for fibre connections from the Ironbridge WNIB exchange! We're connected to 'cabinet 2', which is currently is in the Build phase, and the guidance is that connections to homes should be available within 5 months.)
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