[SOLVED] Manual Ethernet Switch (2 Ethernet cables in, 1 out)

[Kisianik]

Hi
Need simple solution advise.
I have 2 Internet Plans for redundancy, as I work from home and can not afford any sudden downtimes. What I am looking is manual Ethernet switch, which will have 2 Ethernet cables representing 2 different Internet connections coming in and one Ethernet cable coming out to my computer (Network). And I need a simple mechanical switch to choose, which Internet I will choose to use, switching on the fly between 2 Plans.
Right now I have to physically switch Ethernet cables/RJ45 jacks at my PC. I want this more nice and organized, sitting on my desk.

Any ideas always appreciated.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi
Need simple solution advise.
I have 2 Internet Plans for redundancy, as I work from home and can not afford any sudden downtimes. What I am looking is manual Ethernet switch, which will have 2 Ethernet cables representing 2 different Internet connections coming in and one Ethernet cable coming out to my computer (Network). And I need a simple mechanical switch to choose, which Internet I will choose to use, switching on the fly between 2 Plans.
Right now I have to physically switch Ethernet cables/RJ45 jacks at my PC. I want this more nice and organized, sitting on my desk.

Any ideas always appreciated.

You want a dual WAN router. It will automatically fail over. No cable disconnecting required. Business routers and many of the higher end Asus routers can do dual WAN.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Need simple solution advise.

Dual wan routers are not exactly cheap.

You could just install 2 lan cards in your pc.
Enable one card in device manager. When you need to switch to the other connection, then enable other card and disable the first.
You can also write a script, that does this switching with a mouse click.

 

[bill001g]

You are actually doing it the hard way by unplugging stuff.

Leave 1 router setup as normal, this is your primary router. Next set the IP on the second to say 192.168.1.200 assuming the first router is 192.168.1.1. Turn off the DHCP server in the second router. Connect a cable between the lan ports of the 2 routers.

At this point only router 1 will be used and router 2 will do nothing.

To switch use the commands

ROUTE DELETE 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0
ROUTE ADD 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.200

You could write 2 tiny bat files to switch it back and forth.

You can if you are really ambitious actually use both internet connections at the same time by putting in other ROUTE commands so ip addresses goes one and and other traffic goes the other.

 

[Kisianik]

Thanks all for trying to help, but all solutions sounds like somewhat complicated. Is there simple LAN Ethernet switch box where I simple turn the knob, flip the switch to change Internet input.
I can see manual Internet splitters on Amazon, I need something similar reversed type
https://www.amazon.com/CablesOnline-Rotary-Manual-Switch-SB-034/dp/B00EBSR7CQ
Now imagine, 2 Ethernet cables coming in and 1 out, and a switch in between. This is all I need, but reliable. Probably can eventually find it myself, but no time right now, hence I am here.

 

[BFG-9000]

Those switches are bidirectional so will do what you want. Unless you have only one device, it's best to put it between the modems and the router

That said, Tomato firmware has had multi-WAN since 2017 and installs on most routers with Broadcom chipsets