TL;DR: Is there a way to have two different (unreliable) ISPs connected to a single network switch, so that when one drops out, the home network is automatically switched to the other ISP?
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Hi all!
I am a networking hobbyist, and I built out a home network for a family friend of mine living in Mexico. They have an ISP reliability problem I have not encountered before. Their service frequently cuts in and out, and thus they have two separate ISPs to ensure connectivity at all times.
I currently have both ISP’s gateways plugged into the same unmanaged network switch. The hope is that if one ISP goes out, the switch will be smart enough to use the other one. In practice, when both ISPs are up and running, the network switch seems to flip randomly between the two of them which causes interruptions on the home network.
I would like to have both ISPs plugged in at the same time so my customer does not have to walk down to the switch swap inputs. Is this functionality I would need a mananaged switch to accomplish?
Let me know what you think, and thanks for your help!
AF
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You just need a router / gateway that supports load balancing across 2 WANs.
I know that the UI UDM-SE supports this, dont know about others.
Good video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHp0FA9yAKE&t=42s
I can’t think of a way to do it with an unmanaged switch because, if I’m understanding correctly, it’s going to be a routing issue.
I think you need a router in the middle so that your entire home subnet has the same gateway. Then, when one of the uplinks goes down you don’t have to change gateways on anything but the primary router.
https://youtu.be/Fg8GRRUfUVw?si=nI9Y4zkEE3wOiZ-Q
Check this guy out. Might help
Corporate network routers do this.
Technically you could do this with an old Cisco switch and a shell script though. The script would ping a known address on the internet from your computer. When it becomes unpingable, the script telnets into the switch and shuts the interface for the current isp and no shuts the interface for the other isp. Very hacky, but it’s what I would do if I were in your situation and I’d use the old Cisco 3750 I’ve got laying around.
This is called WAN failover (or policy based routing depending on your needs) and that’s of course the job of a router.
ISP’s gateways plugged into the same unmanaged network switch.
This will not work and will cause issues with your networks performance
Get a TP-Link ER605 multi WAN router which is designed to do load balancing or failover with multiple WAN inputs.
Use a multi WAN firewall and plug all three ISP into it. You can build one yourself using opnsense or similar.
This is something a router would do, not a switch. You would need to have a router with multiple WAN ports so not most consumer routers
This a good explanation on how to proceed.
https://packetpassers.com/multiple-isp-connectivity-redundancy/
This how to set it up
https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?id=kA10g000000ClElCAK
These are firewalls to buy. Fort iNet looks like the best to use for dual isps because it offers load balancing to get the best signal and quick switchover.
These are the ones to buy/choose.
https://www.allconnect.com/blog/the-4-best-hardware-firewalls-for-home-wi-fi
Got an old computer sitting in a corner somewhere? Add a multi-port network card and set up Opnsence. Haven’t done it myself, but there are multiple web pages describing how to do just this.
Get a used SRX300 off eBay.
There’s nothing an SRX can’t do.
something like TP-Link ER605 router, allows 2 wan links
Look for a router with multiple wan ports. I used a Luxul XBR-2300 for this style setup for years. My current Araknis AN-310 will do up to 3 Wan ports for fail over. It really depends on how much you’re willing to spend.
Not by a switch. You’d need a multi-WAN port router. Something like the ER605 will do failover.
I use the EdgeRouter Lite. You can configure the 3 ports as you like, I use 2 for WAN and 1 for LAN.