Using LA internet connection as failover with new Provider

[smithson83]

Have any of you "left" your County supplied internet provision, but kept it as a failover with a different supplier?

 

We (read I) want to leave our County's Broadband SLA, but as its top-sliced we've been told we wont get any money back by leaving. So I was wondering if its possible to keep the line, associated setup, IP range etc, but only use it as failover/secondary line.

 

Now I know (think) in theory at leased it should be possible with load balancing etc but in practice, would the council allow this and is it really practical. Do any of you have a similar setup?

[3s-gtech]

Generally, your LEA's SLA won't allow this, but you could leave it disconnected (either physically or virtually) and have it switch over in the event of an outage. You couldn't load balance though. You may also find that some services play up, depending on how your email is hosted etc.

[smithson83]

Ah yeah, didn't think of that, they (and tbh if I were in their shoes, I) would see it as a security hole into their network.

 

Our email is O365, we only have a handful of Outlook clients connected, and they are setup manually, we don't use auto discover.

[ReBoot]

I ran them side by side for a while. Each provider has a different gateway address. Plan was to manually switch in an emergency.

 

DHCP can take care of the network settings but you will also have different proxies for the clients.

 

Problem with the LEA service is that its frequently not a raw data connection you are behind a proxy/filter with no direct internet connection.

[smithson83]

I think we'd be ok on the proxy side of things, our LEA use a transparent proxy, we just specify the Default gateway and the DNS forwarders

[Blue_Cookeh]

I thought about it, then I remembered how obscenely expensive their service was, how terrible support had been, and I couldn't justify it for a failover connection anymore. We just ceased our contract with our LA and are now having Schools Broadband installed. We have a secondary ISP providing standard FTTC for a backup line.

[smithson83]

@Blue_Cookeh did you receive a rebate back on your SLA, we're being told that as it's "top-sliced" we wont get any money back, even if we leave. Only reason I was thinking of just keeping it as a backup.

[Blue_Cookeh]

@Blue_Cookeh did you receive a rebate back on your SLA, we're being told that as it's "top-sliced" we wont get any money back, even if we leave. Only reason I was thinking of just keeping it as a backup.

 

Psht, if we ever saw anything back on our SLA I think I'd die of shock. Luckily our LA broadband was due to be renewed this April and the local village got FTTC a month ago so the timing was perfect.