[SOLVED] How can I set up a tethered (mobile phone) backup internet connection?

[shawnlau]

in Windows 10, ls it possible to set up a tethered mobile internet connection so it is only used regular broadband connection is lost? When I tether my phone to my computer, Windows 10 automatically uses that connection. I don't want that. I want it to only use that connection if there is no other internet connection. I can disable the the tethered connection but that seems ham-fisted. I need to set the ethernet card to have the highest priority and the tethered connection to have a lower priority as it is just a backup. Can I do that?

 

[USAFRet]

just a backup

Are you looking for an automatic fail over?

How often does your regular internet go out?

 

[punkncat]

On the Samsung phone we utilize for work travel, it's tethering ability will time out pretty rapidly if it isn't detecting being used. Even so quickly as stopping at a rest stop. I am not aware of a way (without running some script or ping, etc.) that would keep the connection alive and waiting in the background.

Aside from that aspect, when I tether it is via a Wi-Fi connection which could be set to "auto connect" and would imagine that if your tethered phone does not disconnect on its own then the PC itself would fall back to the wireless just as if through WiFi and home or work.

 

[vov4ik_il]

In most Asus routers, there is a dual WAN option with a mobile USB modem which would be available as failover...

Spoiler: Screenshot

 

[bill001g]

I am kinda surprised it does not already work that way.

The field you are looking for is called metric. There is some way to set it on the interface itself but I have always done it with the route command. You can use ROUTE PRINT to see the metrics. You should see 2 0.0.0.0 routes when you have 2 interfaces.

Now this likely will just give you the reverse problem. In almost all cases of the internet going down you will still have good ethernet connection to your router so the interface will never actually go down.

This gets into the messy question of what does "down" really mean. Some people would say switch when it get above say 25% loss and others would want it to switch at a much higher value or only if it completely goes down. You then have the next question is when do you switch back, a connection that is very intermittenet you will consonantly swap back and forth.

There are programs that will run constant traffic test and then manupulate the routing metrics. This sorta works ok but no matter how good this works you will get a major interuption in your applications. The WAN IP addresses changes and this will drop any open session. Some things that have cookies will complain and you like get stupid captcha stuff.

In general you the human are the best judge of when to change and you can be better prepared for the application issues it will cause.

If it does not work that way by defualt I would make sure the metrics prefer the ethernet. When you want it to switch just unplug or plug in the ethernet.


There really is no good way to solve this in a home environment. This requires you to have actual IP blocks assigned to you that you can move between multiple ISP. It is actually pretty easy to do the swapping on commercial routers, the hard part even for a company willing to pay huge money is getting a block of IP addresses allocated that are owned by the company itself so it can run on multiple ISP

 

[shawnlau]

The reason for it is stock trading online. Prices can change rapidly, and for an internet connection to go out in the middle of a trade could be costly. The tethered connection is a fail-safe to flatten or get out all trades. Its a rare event, but it does happen.

It would be great if there was a program where you could switch networks easily. I tried the interface metric thing, and gave the broadband connection a 1 priority and the tethered connection a 5 priority. It still goes right to the tethered connection which is so much slower. I guess I'll have to manually disable/enable the tethered connection because Windows 10 goes right to that in the blink of an eye.