3.5G Failover Router

[Peter Trend]

I'm fed up of my intermittent 50Mb cable connection and want to protect it with a failover router using an existing 3.5G USB dongle that I already own. Can anybody recommend a good wireless failover router?

It needs to allow automatic switchover from a primary ethernet connection to a 3.5G USB dongle secondary connection when the primary is down, and automatically switch back again when the cable comes back on. I don't want to spend any more than £100, less if possible, but it needs to just work!

Thanks

 

[gsaldivar]

I don't know the specifics of wireless data plans in the UK, but I imagine you're going to spend a great deal more than £100 in fees just to keep the wireless data service turned on. It will also cost much more than that for a router capable of handling a failover to a USB dongle...

 

[Peter Trend]

I already have a 15GB/month contract with a mobile provider and can get 3.5G signal in my house. I hardly ever exceed 4 or 5 GB per month, it's not like I run torrents or anything, mainly browsing and sending small folding@home work units of a few MB back to Stanford every couple of hours. This is why I need failover, to prevent my computers sitting idle and wasting CPU time.

What about this?
http://www.kikatek.com/product_info....ucts_id=168762

or this?
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/174405

The data service costs me £15 per month. My 18 month contract only lasts for a few more months and I may then reduce my download limit (and cost) if I find I don't need all 15GB. I took this contract out when I lived in an apartment without a phone line, and then moved into a house with a free, but unreliable, 50Mb cable conenction.

Edit: If you look at my stats: http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=user&proj=fah&name=Peter_Trend198 my daily variation in output is almost entirely due to connection failures, including 4 days of zero production while I wasn't there to reset the modem! So failover protection will increase my production more effectively than any other single component.

 

[Peter Trend]

Well I bought the TP-Link TL-MR3420 for £31. I can't go too far wrong for that price!

Also ordered a D-Link DWM 156 to replace my current 3.5G dongle as I've never been very impressed with it (it's a ZTE MF627). Fingers crossed all this stuff talks to each other

 

[gsaldivar]

Interesting! I must admit I'm curious to see how it works out, keep us posted!

 

[Peter Trend]

The router and dongle arrived today. I'm up and running already, so far so good!

If I pull out the ethernet cable it switches to 3G mobile broadband. If I plug it back in it switches back to WAN. I'm very impressed for such a cheap product to work out of the box. (I did update the firmware as it suggested and there was a new FW released on the 11th Jan 2011). That only took 2 minutes though.

 

[Emulex]

i use the edimax/xincom dual wan router for over >70 machines (pc,vm's) - works great. very cheap considering i paid $150 about 5 years ago. probably not worth anything.

it uses a combination of http polling AND ping to down an interface (this is better then cisco static Optimized Edge Routing OER). this is better than valet cisco's dual wan router.

I wish cisco would just steal the tech and throw it in a ISR/UC for god's sake.

 

[Peter Trend]

Here is an update: remember the spikey bar chart before from intermittent connection failures? Now have a look!

http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=user&proj=fah&name=Peter_Trend198
(The big spikes are very large work units, I have only completed three of them so far)

Anyway it is clearly working well

 

[gsaldivar]

Nice!! I need to get one of these routers to play with soon.