Backup solution for when there is fibre outage

Ecco

Ecco

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Hi Guys,

Please share if you have any backup solutions for when you fibre goes down.

There been some outages recently and it causes general grumpiness in the house, not to mention impact for working from home.

Are there any LTE solutions with big data bundles you can buy with out contract? or something you can activate on the fly? This seems like the best option - i have LTE and even 5g coverage.

Keen to hear some options that others are using.
 
Ecco said:
Hi Guys,

Please share if you have any backup solutions for when you fibre goes down.

There been some outages recently and it causes general grumpiness in the house, not to mention impact for working from home.

Are there any LTE solutions with big data bundles you can buy with out contract? or something you can activate on the fly? This seems like the best option - i have LTE and even 5g coverage.

Keen to hear some options that others are using.
Click to expand...

i have a Telkom LTE package for this exact purpose - 20 gigs anytime data and 20 gigs midnight data (operates between midnight and 6am or something like that) - package costs R100 per month and i just put a second sim into my phone for data only that i can use as a hotspot to all my other devices

you can obviously get more bandwidth if you pay more money and its a small contract so worth the headache of dealing with Telkom

though they just sent notification that prices are going up soon (if they haven't already - i don't usually pay attention to all these small things) [***** okay - just checked it is now on the website at R125 per month for 22,5 gigs per month + additional night time data and its around R219 per month for 80 gigs per month + night time data and its now called the top up plans]

https://www.telkom.co.za/personal/h...HZDMAWYAWt9Jw9i8P8vhUDf-VHl6D9f09_tmO6EbCTBRl
 
I've got two different fibre accounts/providers running into a Unifi router that can fail over between them. An outage on one just results in an email notification and slight slowing down of my uploads ;P
 
Herr der Verboten said:
Depends on your approx daily usage?
Click to expand...

I dont expect to use it at all. I only want to use it when there is a Fibre outage and only for the duration of the outage, which could be a few hours to a few days.
 
Ironically I have been considering this as well. We just had two days at my office with no Fibre (Openserve). I have a backup LTE router which I use for all the staff and I have an afrihost data sim of which I then take out my phone and put it into the LTE router, however I am looking for something that is less hands on. So if the fibre goes down it automatically cuts over to an LTE line on the router where the data sim doesn't dry up if not used for months on end.

Is this possible?
 
Ecco said:
I dont expect to use it at all. I only want to use it when there is a Fibre outage and only for the duration of the outage, which could be a few hours to a few days.
Click to expand...
What I'm on the lowest tier for this which is about 50 zar a month. When fiber goes down, I plug this into my switch and the router out, then I top up as needed. When you don't stream video, audio, game updates and just work you may need at least 50gb, maybe more or less depending on your load.
 
ISP cash cow said:
Ironically I have been considering this as well. We just had two days at my office with no Fibre (Openserve). I have a backup LTE router which I use for all the staff and I have an afrihost data sim of which I then take out my phone and put it into the LTE router, however I am looking for something that is less hands on. So if the fibre goes down it automatically cuts over to an LTE line on the router where the data sim doesn't dry up if not used for months on end.

Is this possible?
Click to expand...
Most mid to higher end routers will allow this, you configure the LTE as the backup and once the primary is down the router auto switches to the other line
 
I've used this TP-Link load balance/fail-over router. @Sinbad mentioned a Unifi above.

www.tp-link.com

Load Balance Broadband Router

Load Balance Broadband Router
www.tp-link.com www.tp-link.com

There may be a newer version but that's the one I have. (For sale for R500!)

For fibre outages I have a Cell C sim with 50GB for R549 (valid for 6 months) which I use in an LTE router. So the MTN deal looks interesting... Edit: seems Cell C is still the better deal.
 
Last edited:
purrr said:
I've used this TP-Link load balance/fail-over router. @Sinbad mentioned a Unifi above.

www.tp-link.com

Load Balance Broadband Router

Load Balance Broadband Router
www.tp-link.com www.tp-link.com

There may be a newer version but that's the one I have. (For sale for R500!)

For fibre outages I have a Cell C sim with 50GB for R549 (valid for 6 months) which I use in an LTE router. So the MTN deal looks interesting... Edit: seems Cell C is still the better deal.
Click to expand...

Do you have a link for the Cell C deal?
 
ajax said:
You can also go with megsapp that runs on MTN. 55GB at R600 that never expires.
View attachment 1899864
Click to expand...
I use megsapp as well as backup lte , across many business sites. Haven't topped up in ages.

With unifi routers it's very easy to do

Reasonably priced router for the features :
www.geewiz.co.za

Ubiquiti Multi-WAN UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra | UCG-Ultra

4x Gigabit Ethernet ports 1x 2.5Gbps WAN Port/li> a quad-core 1.5GHz CPU/li> 0.96" LCM status display Multi-WAN load balancing PLEASE NOTE - By default, for powered items, Ubiquiti includes adapter plugs that are not suited for South Africa. In these cases, the wrong adapter plug will carefully...
www.geewiz.co.za www.geewiz.co.za
 
I use Afrihost's 5Gb Pure LTE package at R49 per month on a LTE router connected on the second WAN port of an Ubiquiti USG. It is cheap enough that you don't not notice the cost on a monthly basis.
 
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