Wired GigE Router with USB Modem Failover and Failback?

[hound99]

Looking for a Wired Gigabit Ethernet router that can failover and failback to a USB modem.

I was thinking of an all-in-one solution like the Cradlepoint MBR95 or Pep SOHO, but the wifi is so woefully inadequate on those units. I'm going to just use my R7000 as an access point instead.

What do people recommend? I want this to be as future proof as possible. I was looking at the Peplink Balance One or the Cisco RV320.

Internet (Cable/USB 4G) -- Router -- switch/wifi access point.

There will be about 25 wifi and wired devices.

Thoughts?

 

[Trip]

Hi hound. If you're looking at the Balance One or Cisco RVs, you may also want to consider a CradlePoint MBR 1400. For more of a security appliance, perhaps a Fortinet, SonicWall, Cyberoam, ZyXel, etc. at whatever speed tier you desire. All right around $400-$600 price point.

Edit: MikroTik may also be a value option, assuming compatibility with the modems you're using, and/or your willingness to work with RouterOS.

 

[hound99]

Thanks! I'll check out the mbr1400. I do like cradle points interface better.

 

[stevech]

I have an older Cradlepoint MBR900.
It never hangs, crashes, in several years of use. Its 11n is fast enough for the handhelds around here - iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Android tablet. At the 35Mbps rate for the devices that can achieve that.

I have used it in fail-over - where it fails to a USB cellular modem (Verizon).
It can be configured to trigger a fail-over if the ping to a certain IP address fails too long.

Mine, connected to a cable modem, gets a bit confused, when the cat5 WAN link is OK, has link-lights, but the RF side of the cable modem is down. In this fail-over you have to rely on ping response failures to trigger a failover.

Failback (automatic) - is tricky with this, since the router has to keep trying the inactive cable modem link to know when it restores, and the router can fail-back automatically.

I'm not sure I ever got all this to work right for an unattended situation.
Mainly, the fail-over happened, I got an email that this happened, and I had to manually diagnose what's wrong the the cable modem/ISP and when to force a fail-back - which I can do by re-plugging the CAT5 cable, or power cycling the cable modem, to cause a momentary cat5 link light dropout.

 

[hound99]

I went with a peplink balance 20 with a r7000 router as access point. It's the perfect setup and works flawlessly with my LTE and cable.

 

[Trip]

Sounds like a nice combo. I'll venture you decided not to go with GigE WAN because cable + LTE bandwidth < 100mbit (or thereabouts)?

 

[hound99]

Yup. It's about 50 Mbps.