Leased Line Circuit backup

[ITGURU]

Hi

We are a MAT with leased lines to all sites using the emPSN network with site-to-site connectivity aswell.

What does everyone do for a backup line/filtering to ensure failover in the event of a lease line failure (which we currently have at one site and BT are not being very fast about the repair!

Do you have backup for inbound NAT too or just failover to outbound internet access?

thanks.

[Aprice]

On the sites with Backup connections, we have a 1gig leased line to a Smoothwall with a standard BT Business internet connection as a backup. Smoothwall just handles the failover should the leased line go down.

 

Internet access will continue to work for internal devices, Direct access / AOVPN and RDS will cease until the leased line reconnects. Usage of these services is fairly low anyway so I doubt anyone would notice apart from ourselves. I would manually change these if there would be any sort of sustained downtime to get them running again.

 

My backup VPN would still work so we can dial in remotely and I'd get a couple of notifications from Zabbix to let me know that the leased line went down and another once it restores.

[SchoolsBroadband]

When using our MPSL or VPLS WAN services by default on our network we move all IPs onto the backup connection via BGP. This means that all your firewall rules continue to function as they were on the primary circuit. I'd always recommend using 2 routers to get rid of the possibility of total hardware failure too.

 

We are also starting to see a few customers take SD-WAN with onsite firewalls that doesn't allow the failover of services if you use 2 different ISPs (which is the advantage of SD-WAN).

 

As to what backup connectivity you use, that ultimately depends on your requirements and also what's available to you. We see some secondary schools starting to take resilient leased lines from different carriers. Personally I'd recommend a leased line as a primary connection and an FTTP as a backup (if you can get it) for secondary schools. For primary a leased line or FTTP for primary and FTTC or 5G for backup.

 

If you need any advice do send me a PM.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Mr.Ben]

Our new provision will have leased lines (300 to 1000Mbps) backed up with either FTTP or FTTC connections.

 

We are firewalling each site with an SDWAN so that we can make use of both connections and in the case of FTTC connections prioritise certain services.

[Wave9_Lee]

Hi

We are a MAT with leased lines to all sites using the emPSN network with site-to-site connectivity aswell.

What does everyone do for a backup line/filtering to ensure failover in the event of a lease line failure (which we currently have at one site and BT are not being very fast about the repair!

Do you have backup for inbound NAT too or just failover to outbound internet access?

thanks.

Do you take the core services from empsn (I recall their filtering providers used to have to be 'inline' at their datacentre - but this may have changed) - if so you need to think about whether any of your services will still work on a 3rd party backup line. What do you do for DNS for instance?

[slugshead]

I have two connections connected into the smoothie, LLB setup and it just works. No need for fancy stuff at the ISP end..

[Wubbalubbadub]

We looked into a backup line for all our schools, but just a standard 80/20 at each school (21) came to nearly 15k a year.. which seemed a lot of "just in case money"

 

We are about to start running a trial with starlink as our backup line. Which is just over £1200 per year for the business non fixed location option.

 

With leased lines we expect minimal downtime, but if one goes down we can drive out and setup the starlink.

Idea is to have a site up within 30-60 minutes.

 

It's a trial for now, but I suspect we may adapt the plan to have a proper backup line for the secondary schools and then have starlink for the primary schools, as secondary schools are more reliant.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Wubbalubbadub

[SchoolsBroadband]

We looked into a backup line for all our schools, but just a standard 80/20 at each school (21) came to nearly 15k a year.. which seemed a lot of "just in case money"

 

We are about to start running a trial with starlink as our backup line. Which is just over £1200 per year for the business non fixed location option.

 

With leased lines we expect minimal downtime, but if one goes down we can drive out and setup the starlink.

Idea is to have a site up within 30-60 minutes.

 

It's a trial for now, but I suspect we may adapt the plan to have a proper backup line for the secondary schools and then have starlink for the primary schools, as secondary schools are more reliant.

 

Make sure you buy the roaming bolt-on Matt otherwise it might not working when going to different sites.

 

We've used Starlink ourselves and top speeds i've seen have been about 300Mbps download and 50Mbps upload. Its really good from experience.

 

Dave

[PaddyNewman]

We've used Starlink ourselves and top speeds i've seen have been about 300Mbps download and 50Mbps upload. Its really good from experience.

 

I use Starlink as my primary home ISP and have done for for 6-7 weeks now.

 

What I would say is that it can struggle if someone occupies the downstream, be that with Windows Updates or large downloads. I get ~230Mb down and ~50Mb up currently and whilst that is really decent (when my DSL is around 13-16Mb) it does absolutely destroy the connection when I hit any download. Its almost getting to the point where I think I need QoS switching inside to prioritise everything but generic web browsing and downloading as it can crash my teams sessions if I crack on with Windows Updates or even a throttled Steam game (say throttling at 3MB/s) it seems to saturate the signal.

 

It is definitely viable though! I love it, despite the costs for residential! Needs a very clear sight to sky though!

[Wubbalubbadub]

Make sure you buy the roaming bolt-on Matt otherwise it might not working when going to different sites.

 

We've used Starlink ourselves and top speeds i've seen have been about 300Mbps download and 50Mbps upload. Its really good from experience.

 

Dave

 

Thanks Dave! We have bought the roaming bolt on!

 

Would be good to talk about how maybe we can apply your filtering to starlink? If that is at all possible!

[SchoolsBroadband]

Thanks Dave! We have bought the roaming bolt on!

 

Would be good to talk about how maybe we can apply your filtering to starlink? If that is at all possible!

 

Yes we should be able to Matt as we can do our services over any ISP network although ideally we only do this when we peer with them.

 

Do get in touch with Craig and we'll get our new pre-sales man to give you a call but essentially we can tunnel traffic.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[TechMonkey]

We are using an SD-WAN product that trunks 2 separate lines into one, fully managed by the company. So if one goes down we can hobble along on the other, if one has constant problems they move us onto a different supplier.

 

Its a bit black box magic but seems pretty cool. This is mainly to join 3 sites together, but is a nice added benefit.