How To Setup Cellular Failover On Your Home Network (Using TP-Link Gear)

Today, I finally finished setting up my home network in a way that is optimized for automatic failover onto 4G cellular connectivity. After some experimentation, I finally worked out how to get my TP-Link cellular router (TL-MR 100) to feed its connectivity into my TP-Link load balancer (R470T+). (Make sure to assign an IP to the cellular router that's outside the IP address range of the LAN devices that the main router is neworking / in a different subnet).

The ISP line goes into the load balancer too. And then there's a WiFi access point downstream. Everything is working great and the failover time from ISP to cellular is now less than 2 seconds - compared to 20-30 seconds when doing failover just on the cellular router (with ISP pass-through connectivity).

Two corrections:

The upstream router needs to have an assigned IP that is a different subnet to the LAN / DHCP server. Therefore it needs to be OUTSIDE the range on the LAN.

Secondly the failover time isn't quite as rosey as I thought. On repeated testing I'm getting more like 30/30.

To open source the 'how to' for this project, here's the 'documentation' describing exactly how I set this all up:

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[BrettHarvey]

can you please let me know how you were able to get the cellular router connected(or even my EE router), I cannot get the internet to work at all, I'm not using bridging, I've tried setting up multiple different lans that are not the same as up stream routers, but i still get no connection, any help would be greatly appreciated

[michaellaweh]

Thank you Daniel for your videos on Cellular Failover, I am trying this setup I have 3 Isp's One as the main Isp and the other 2 as backup Isps. I am trying to get the perfect Load balancing router for this setup. Currently did some searches around Gigabit Multi WAN Router with Failover and Load Balancing could you please suggest any good ones for this purpose?

[babelhoo]

Thanks for the clear explanation. I'm building a house in the country where there's only a single, and not great, ISP, so I started to look at a LTE failover solution that won't be too expensive (and available locally to me). One question; is the switch connected to the balancer required? can't I just plug the couple of wired devices I have to one of the free RJ45 plugs on the balancer? thanks!

[TaldrenDR]

What are you using as a firewall? I didn't see one in your diagram.
I have a 4G LTE Modem (Netgear) and Cable Modem (Netgear) going into a Load Balancer (TP-Link) which feeds into a Firewall (SonicWall) which then splits into an Access Point (Netgear), 1GBE Switch (Netgear), and 10GBE Switch (QNAP). My Backup server, NAS, and primary PC all connect to the 10GBE switch while everything else is split between the 1GBE switch and WiFi.
Been thinking of upgrading from Cellular as my backup to Starlink, but that may be overkill.

[MySpam-vt]

Hi, can you tell me please what can I do so my wifi will switch automatically to a mobile router if the local ISP has a connectivity issue? The main issue I have is, that the ring alarm system I use wont work with their internal SIM card on my location. I wished to reroute the traffic to the mobile router if for whatever reason the local internet doesnt work. So I could still get an alarm even someone would cut the internet cable outside of the house.

[deepakvrao]

Hi, I have an Asus router where I have my wired internet coming into the WAN port. It has a failover mode where it can take a second internet connection into the LAN 1 port. Can't I just use the TP Link MR100 connected to the LAN failover port?

[sklberke]

Hi Daniel, I am also trying to configure a similar system to yours. But you mentioned if you had a bridge mode capable LTE router to begin with, it would be an easier option. Or at least thats what I understood. So I'm currently in market for an LTE router. If I buy a bridge mode compatible version is it easy to configure for failover? Because I'm honestly not very experienced with IT stuff, so if it needs a lot of tweaking and complicated configurations, I may not manage to do it by myself.