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Forum Discussion
LBR20 - 4G/LTE as failover doesn't work flawlessly
Hi everyone, as suggested by a fellow user in the "Orbi" Forum, I repost my question here trying to get an well informed answer from the community. I've got an issue with my LBR20 configuration...
Seconded on this question. A failover time of over 2 minutes is not useful, and the inability to revert to ISP connectivity automatically is even more disqualifying -- it would be far too easy to blow through an LTE bandwidth allocation without realizing it!
If it may help, after a few months with the LBR20, I can confirm that the switch to 4G when the main link fails can take up to 3 mns, I suspect I miss it sometimes but when you watch Netflix or similar, you can't miss it and this can be long, especially when the main link gets back up and down a few times in the evening.
However I have to say that I can't confirm that it doesn't switch back to the main link when it's up again. I can take some time (a few minutes) but it always switch back to the main link when available.
Dear Netgear team, it would be really useful to be able to manage the default detection time/frequency to be something closer to 30/45 secs.
After applying the latest firmware, v2.6.4.2, it now falls back from LTE to wired, about 30-35 seconds to detect the wired WAN connection, then takes about 20 seconds to switch over. During this time, there is no internet connectivity.
With the new firmware, wired WAN to LTE fail-over is about 1:15 - 2+ minutes before it switches to LTE. Internet goes down right away and the top purple light comes on to indicate that it is offline. Still doing some test, but it certainly is working better. One of the test, took 3+ minutes to switch from WAN to LTE. I'll have to see if there are any adjustments to make, I didn't see any.
Those switchover times match my measurements as well. It seems to work very well.
Does anyone know how to get a notification that it has switched to LTE and again when it switches back? Mine switched over the other day and ran up 4 GB of data without me noticing. That's was a great success, but could have been disasterous if I hadn't accidently noticed after 2 days.
I can have a computer do a regular ping to find the public ip address, and maybe interpret whether it belongs to the LTE ISP or the Landline ISP. But it would be REALLY nice if the Orbi would just send an email when it switches over - since it already knows how to send me an email...
Any ideas??...
Thanks for your tests. It indeed matches what I can witness.
The thing is that 2+ minutes to switch from broken wired to LTE feels too long.
In my case, I have a wired link that is sometimes unstable. Sometimes, for a 1hr long period, it can drop for 3 mins, then get back up for 1 min, then drop again for 5 mins, then get back up for 2 mins...
When this happens, the fact that it takes 2+ mins to switch from broken wired to LTE and then 30 seconds to switch back to working wired makes me feel that it never switches to LTE. For 1h, I struggle having a working Internet connection.
If the wired connection had dropped for 1hr long, I would have only had a 2mins connection loss, but the fact that it sometimes gets back up again but for a short period of time makes the router switch back to wired connection just before it drops again and take 2+ mins to re-switch to LTE.
In this case, I'd really prefer to be on LTE all that time so I can work with bearly noticing any connection drop or only for 2 mns.
That's why I would love to have a setting where I could set the connection check frequency and method (ping to one of my servers).
When the path is changed, there is a lot has to happen to recreate your connection in the new path. It might not even be over the same provider. There are chances for lost data while the switchover is taking place. It takes a little while to determine that the path has failed, vs just being slow to respond. I assume that is why they have a longer delay before doing the switchover so that it isn't frantically flopping back and forth.
I agree that it would be great if it switched over seamlessly in a second or two, but I'm not sure that's technically possible.
I assume you've already put pressure on your landline ISP to make their circuit work properly? Maybe different ISP could do better?
I understand your explanation about path switch delays but I believe this is doable in less than a few seconds.
French ISP "Free" has launched a few weeks ago and new proprietary modem (Fiber + LTE) that is able to switch from one connection to another in less that 2 secs?!. Heres is a video (sorry it's in french but you can understand without sound) where we can see the lady unplugging the main fiber link while the ping results show that it's still connected (TTL going from 250 to 47 shows that it changed the link). It only drops one packet when she plugs the main link back.
https://youtu.be/PYMEuUakEBE?t=157
Regarding my ISP, of course I called them a lot for that matter, but my main wired connection relies on coaxical cable technology which seems to be very sensitive against outside perturbations.
Optic fiber has just come to my door, I may be upgrading very soon. Maybe that "slow" path changing issue will not be an issue in the next few weeks :)
Wow, that looks like an awesome system. Love the fast switching!