4G failover

[Quatermass]

Leaving aside yesterday's O2 fun and games, is anyone using a 4G failover solution for their internet in case their main LEA connection goes down? Any thoughts? Costs?

[dhicks]

Leaving aside yesterday's O2 fun and games, is anyone using a 4G failover solution for their internet in case their main LEA connection goes down? Any thoughts? Costs?

 

How do you mean by "4G"? I use Relish for my home broadband, and that's 4G-based, but separate from any phone account. I think I get around 20Mbps download and 2 or 3Mbps upload, which isn't bad for home broadband and might just about be suitible in a pinch to keep people able to send / receive emails if nothing else. Latency times tend to be much larger than fibre / ADSL connections, which seems to cause issues with VPN and/or SSH connections - I find SSH connections timeout at home if I haven't typed anything for a couple of minutes.

 

I spoke to a couple of vendors recently about connection options, and someone mentioned a 4G-based "backup" service. They seemed to think that was synchonous - 20Mbps each way. I think they were selling this particular service as a temporary solution while they sorted out the cabled connection, so I'm not sure how generally available that solution is, or whether you can actually buy a syncronous 4G connection from anywhere.

[Quatermass]

A bit vague, I know. We're just starting to explore failover options as we move more and more to the cloud. Hard to get staff on board with using OneDrive if our LEA connection falls over (not unheard of...)

[DSapseid]

I have a BT Infinity contract on its on phone line. I use it day to day for the VOIP phones and then its there if i need to use it for anything else should i need to. £30 a month is a cheap solution for a backup line in my eyes.

 

I do also have a couple of 4G wifi dongles in my drawer that we can use in a mega emergency. These were bought for another reason and just kept not bought specifically for a 3rd option for broadband.

[GreyArc-Marc]

When considering this, make sure you have a plan to divert inbound services such as email. If they are pointing at a public IP of your primary connection then your 4G will only be useful for outbound internet access.

Consider low TTL on dns records so when you change them the changes get picked up quickly

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi

 

We often deploy 4G as failover, (or early/interim connectivity) and it can also be suitable for voice with Fixed IP. Ref inbound, it's fair to say that email is mostly cloud based now, and some of the inbound issues can be dealt with by dynamic DNS or MX record configuration. So there are ways to mitigate the worst effects.

 

Depending on your location, the more usual form of failover would be Ethernet Leased Line as Prime, and say, FttC as failover (through a different carrier), so this gives you different technology resilience. BT fibre and copper will often use the same duct, and they're in the same exchange footprint, so it's not fool proof, but probably good enough (at the price). You can go to extremes with resilience, but there comes a point where the cost outweighs the benefit.

[localzuk]

We don't have 4G failover - but we do have FTTC failover for our leased line.

[dhicks]

I have a BT Infinity contract on its on phone line.

 

If I understand correctly, BT's "4G Assure" package is an ADSL line with an assured 4G backup solution in place should the ADSL line fail. The 4G hub delivery in case of failure is next-day, but I don't know if you can pay up front for a hub to be delivered so you have one ready to go. I seem to remember reading somewhere that if you have a mobile line with BT / EE they'll turn on unlimited data within an hour on your mobile, so you could maybe have a separate SIM card in a hub ready to go if there's an issue. Not sure on costs, but I'm guessing home / business ADLS rates, maybe £60 a month or so?