Question Dual ISP - Router and Switch Configuration and Router Selection

[shubhankar_venkatesh]

I am planning to get a second ISP connection as the current one does not provide me enough Upload speeds. I am in North America, Texas. I have Spectrum as of now with 1G Down and 35M Up.
Will be getting ATT Fiber with 500M Up and Down for my upload needs. Problem with ATT is many times it goes down for 3-4 hours and happens every 2-3 weeks while spectrum remains very stable.

Confuguration
ISP (ATT Fiber 500 )---------------------------------------|(1G / 2.5G WAN Port for future upgrade)
ISP (Spectrum--------------------------- (1G WAN)--Router---(10G port)--------------------------------------------------Switch(2.5G 5 ports) ----------------- PC1, PC2, PC3 etc

I have selected below mentioned routers and switch for the above configuration.

1. ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 Pro Tri-Band WiFi 6 Extendable Gaming Router, 10G & 2.5G Ports - $399
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BQ41LDQ3/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&th=1

This has 1 - 2.5G WAN port ; 1- 10G port ; 4 - 1G port.
Can I use the 1G Lan port to terminate the Spectrum ISP and 2.5G WAN port for ATT and use the 10G port for switch connectivity ? I have doubt about using the 1G LAN port for terminating the Spectrum ISP.

2. TP-Link WiFi 6 Gaming Router - Archer AX10000 - $349
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09N6R2SLV/ref=twister_B09PG47HJT?_encoding=UTF8&th=1

The above router has only 1 - 2.5G WAN and 8 - 1G Port. Same question -
Can I use the 1G Lan port to terminate the Spectrum ISP and 2.5G WAN port for ATT and use the 1G LAN port for switch connectivity ? I have doubt about using the 1G LAN port for terminating the Spectrum ISP.

3. Costliest - ASUS ROG Rapture WiFi 6E Gaming Router (GT-AXE16000) - $599
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09Z792WWF/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&th=1

This has 1 - 2.5G WAN port ; 2 - 10G port ; 4 - 1G port.
Can I use the 1G LAN port to terminate the Spectrum ISP and 2.5G WAN port for ATT and use the 10G port for switch connectivity ? I have doubt about using the 1G LAN port for terminating the Spectrum ISP.
Although I can use the other 10G port for the ATT Fiber and 2.5G for Spectrum WAN.

SWITCH
1. TRENDnet 5-Port Unmanaged 2.5G Switch, 5 x 2.5GBASE-T Ports, 25Gbps Switching Capacity
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XWK4HNT/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

I think the 3rd option will work, but I dont want to spend $650 (with taxes) over a router and then a 2.5G or a 10G switch worth over $150 - 300. Budget being $500 at max. I current own $300 router from Netgear. Willing to go a notch above to get a decent upload speeds

Please share your thoughts
Thanks
Shubhankar

 

[Ralston18]

Questions:

What is your service plan with Spectrum? What speeds are you paying for?

How many PC's are actually connected via the existing router and switch?

Make and model: router, switch?

Where/what sites are you down loading from? The slowness could be beyond your network/router(s) and even either of both of the ISP's.

Have you contacted AT&T regarding the downtimes?

With two ISP's and different routers you may create conflicts within your network. Even if doing some selection change between routers.

My thoughts: do some more troubleshooting. Learn more about what is or even is not happening.

You can use command line tools such as "ping", "pathping", and tracert" to look for problems.

More information needed. Certainly before spending additional funds on more devices of any sort.

 

[bill001g]

So to make things easier maybe just forget about designing for more than 1gbit until you have a actual need for it. Almost nobody "needs" even 1gbit. The only thing it really helps is file downloads. I guess it depends on how many games you download in a day. Sure a game may download in say 5 minutes rather than 10 minutes but does that really matter and does it justify the extra monthly costs ignoring the cost of routers that can actually use a internet above 1gbit if you go that option.

You are going to have to read the manual to see what ports can act as dual wan. From a quick look on the first one I did not even find the manual just some quick start guide. My guess is it uses the 2.5 and 10g ports as wan ports but not the 1gbit ports. Hard to say most asus routers support dual wan even if they only have all 1gbit ports.

Dual wan sounds nice but in the real world things seldom fail cleanly. What does "down" actually mean. Obviously if you turn off the modem the ethernet port would go down and the router would know that internet connection is dead. What is much more likely is the modem is powered on but has no internet or maybe it has a connection to the remote ISP equipment but no data can pass that point. Then you have the case that the connection partially works but you get lots of data loss.....again what is "lots" ?

In the end it maybe simpler to just take your new router you buy and manually move the cable between att and spectrum. You the human are much more likely to know when you need to switch.

In any case switch between ISP no matter how you accomplish it does not work all that well. Your IP addresses changes so at very best you must refresh the pages and relog into sites. Many times sites get all confused because of the cookies they stored that do not match the new ip and/or you get a bunch of captcha garbage.

 

[shubhankar_venkatesh]

Questions:

What is your service plan with Spectrum? What speeds are you paying for?

How many PC's are actually connected via the existing router and switch?

Make and model: router, switch?

Where/what sites are you down loading from? The slowness could be beyond your network/router(s) and even either of both of the ISP's.

Have you contacted AT&T regarding the downtimes?

With two ISP's and different routers you may create conflicts within your network. Even if doing some selection change between routers.

My thoughts: do some more troubleshooting. Learn more about what is or even is not happening.

You can use command line tools such as "ping", "pathping", and tracert" to look for problems.

More information needed. Certainly before spending additional funds on more devices of any sort.

What is your service plan with Spectrum? What speeds are you paying for?
A. $70 per month. 1G Down ; 35M up as mentioned above

How many PC's are actually connected via the existing router and switch?
A. Currently, I have 5 PCs connected to Routers. 2 via Ethernet cable directly to router and the rest on WIFI. No switch as of now.

Make and model: router, switch?
A. NETGEAR C7800 Modem. No switch as of now.

Where/what sites are you down loading from? The slowness could be beyond your network/router(s) and even either of both of the ISP's.
I use my Employers website which is very heavy to load and upload multiple large visio drawing of complex networks for nationwide designs and on the side I do 4K video editing and uploads.

Have you contacted AT&T regarding the downtimes?
A. As mentioned above, I dont have ATT as of now, I am planning to take it. Please check the text above. But people have in the community and every few weeks there is an outage reported which lasts 3-4 hours.

With two ISP's and different routers you may create conflicts within your network. Even if doing some selection change between routers.
A. Not sure I understand this one,

My thoughts: do some more troubleshooting. Learn more about what is or even is not happening.

You can use command line tools such as "ping", "pathping", and tracert" to look for problems.

 

[BFG-9000]

Both ASUS routers you have listed advertise Dual-WAN capability but the TP-Link does not. Automatic failover... does not always work well.

Nowadays third-party router firmware supports multi-WAN but the only AX chipsets that currently work with any are MediaTek, and while presumably Qualcomm-Atheros support will arrive any day now, the three Broadcom devices you have selected will never be supported because Broadcom would rather you had to buy another device later to sell more chipsets. See if it's available for your Netgear.

Third-party firmware not only extends the life of your device by continuing to provide security updates long after the manufacturer has discontinued them, but also provides an alternative if you are not happy with how the original device firmware functions while it is being actively supported.

 

[Ralston18]

Concerning:

"I use my Employers website which is very heavy to load and upload multiple large visio drawing of complex networks for nationwide designs and on the side I do 4K video editing and uploads. "

Have you discussed the problem with your employer? Do other employees experience similar problems with uploads? If the slowness is at your employer's site then there may be little that you can do to fix that problem. Likewise for the websites accessed for your 4K video editing activities.

As for AT&T, I would certainly consider what the community is saying but I would also try to discover some specific facts and information. Ocassionally services will be lost due to weather, accidents, power outages, and even ISP maintenance requirements. Happens to all ISPs and responsiveness varies.

And the posts by both @bill001g and @BFG-9000 go into even more detail about what all is involved and what must be considered.

AT&T fiber may be faster. Yet overall performance will still be that of the slowest link in the connection path(s).

Plus you will be paying for two ISP's and may not actually gain much performance even if switching between the ISPs. Maybe try both for a couple of months and then drop the service that proves generally being slower and/or less reliable.

That all said, I believe that more effort must be made to determine the reason(s) why the upload speed is slow.

 

[shubhankar_venkatesh]

So to make things easier maybe just forget about designing for more than 1gbit until you have a actual need for it. Almost nobody "needs" even 1gbit. The only thing it really helps is file downloads. I guess it depends on how many games you download in a day. Sure a game may download in say 5 minutes rather than 10 minutes but does that really matter and does it justify the extra monthly costs ignoring the cost of routers that can actually use a internet above 1gbit if you go that option.

You are going to have to read the manual to see what ports can act as dual wan. From a quick look on the first one I did not even find the manual just some quick start guide. My guess is it uses the 2.5 and 10g ports as wan ports but not the 1gbit ports. Hard to say most asus routers support dual wan even if they only have all 1gbit ports.

Dual wan sounds nice but in the real world things seldom fail cleanly. What does "down" actually mean. Obviously if you turn off the modem the ethernet port would go down and the router would know that internet connection is dead. What is much more likely is the modem is powered on but has no internet or maybe it has a connection to the remote ISP equipment but no data can pass that point. Then you have the case that the connection partially works but you get lots of data loss.....again what is "lots" ?

In the end it maybe simpler to just take your new router you buy and manually move the cable between att and spectrum. You the human are much more likely to know when you need to switch.

In any case switch between ISP no matter how you accomplish it does not work all that well. Your IP addresses changes so at very best you must refresh the pages and relog into sites. Many times sites get all confused because of the cookies they stored that do not match the new ip and/or you get a bunch of captcha garbage.

Concerning:

"I use my Employers website which is very heavy to load and upload multiple large visio drawing of complex networks for nationwide designs and on the side I do 4K video editing and uploads. "

Have you discussed the problem with your employer? Do other employees experience similar problems with uploads? If the slowness is at your employer's site then there may be little that you can do to fix that problem. Likewise for the websites accessed for your 4K video editing activities.

As for AT&T, I would certainly consider what the community is saying but I would also try to discover some specific facts and information. Ocassionally services will be lost due to weather, accidents, power outages, and even ISP maintenance requirements. Happens to all ISPs and responsiveness varies.

And the posts by both @bill001g and @BFG-9000 go into even more detail about what all is involved and what must be considered.

AT&T fiber may be faster. Yet overall performance will still be that of the slowest link in the connection path(s).

Plus you will be paying for two ISP's and may not actually gain much performance even if switching between the ISPs. Maybe try both for a couple of months and then drop the service that proves generally being slower and/or less reliable.

That all said, I believe that more effort must be made to determine the reason(s) why the upload speed is slow.

Hey Man,

Instead of asking all the random questions. Why dont to give me a straight forward answer. Whether it will work or not, instead of going into my employers website design and what not.
Problem of ATT, In the 2 months I have been there ATT has suffered 4 or more outages over 4 hours long and Spectrum had just one planned outage.

 

[bill001g]

Hey Man,

Instead of asking all the random questions. Why dont to give me a straight forward answer. Whether it will work or not, instead of going into my employers website design and what not.
Problem of ATT, In the 2 months I have been there ATT has suffered 4 or more outages over 4 hours long and Spectrum had just one planned outage.

short answer is it appears the routers do not use the ports the way you want. The most straight forward answer is go read the manuals on how set this feature up

 

[Ralston18]

I asked about the employer's website/servers for two reasons:

1) If you are the only employee experiencing upload speed problems then the problem is likely on your end: either your ISP, your routers/ports, or even your network/computer.

- Agree with the preceding post: read the manuals.

2) If multiple employees are experiencing upload speed problems then something is amiss on the employer's end. For any number of potential reasons....

- Without investigating or otherwise considering matters at the employer's site you will be spending your money trying to unsucessfully solve your employer's IT problems. Your choice.

= = = =

As for AT&T; all ISPs have problems. Some ISP's more than others. Can vary with region and country even if the same company.

The described outages may be completely out of their control. Thunderstorms for example. Then again maybe the local ISP over sold capacity. Or is not maintaining its' equipment and lines. Bad management, unskilled techs, people stealing services, many possibilities there as well....

Read the ISP service agreements - lots of loopholes with respect to the services that you sign up to receive and what you may actually receive. All the more so if there is little or no competition in your area.

Spectrum may just be having some good luck....

Also requesting the results of ping, pathping, and tracert (there are other similar tools as well) are not random questions.

Basic troubleshooting methods. Not absolutely perfect but can provide more information about what could be happening and where.