Portable wireless router / repeater with 4g fail over

[Jakeneon]

Hi, I'm trying to build a set-up for my girlfriend. She's a film producer and moves between studios with a wireless fibre optic internet connection and the field a lot. I want to put a network laser printer in a flight case with a wireless repeater that can easily be reconfigured to share a studios wireless connection (thus still giving access to the printer for her and her team) but that also has a 4g modem that it automatically switches to when no wireless network is configured / available to repeat.

The. Upshot being that everyone connects to the network in order to share files and access the printer, if at a studio she can input the details to the router for the local wifi connection to repeat, but if on location it defaults to a 4g connection.

Anyone have any ideas on the ideal networking hardware? The set-up of network details to repeat needs to be fairly simple and should ideally automatically switch over to 4g when unavailable. I know the simple solution is to forget the wireless repeating aspect and just build a case with printer and 4g router, but this would mean either using the slower 4g connection even when fibre optic wifi available or not having access to the printer, or switching wifi networks constantly.

Any ideas on what hardware to buy much appreciated!

 

[chris_shadez]

Powerline networking? The adapters work in pairs, plugged into the power outlet with an ethernet patch cable
Adapter 1 connects from power outlet near router > to router
Adapter 2 connects from power outlet to printer (wired ethernet) and can be moved to anywhere within the same powerline network

 

[bill001g]

Wanting the 4g ability in the repeater is the tricky part. Many routers have the ability to run 4g broadband as backup. The higher end ASUS comes to mind but there are quite a few. You might be able to do this with a DD-WRT load on a router...again a asus runs dd-wrt really good. I know you can get the dd-wrt to take the WAN from a wireless and I know it will run a backup 4g. What I don't know is if you use the wireless for the wan can it also transmit the lan out at the same time. ie be a repeater with a backup 4g. I know it can run as repeater but when you set it to repeater mode I don't think it will switch over to the 4g.

Although more costly the simple solution is to use 2 devices. You can use a normal router that has 4g backup ability, asus,tplink etc. Then use a wireless bridge for the wan port. Something like a engenius enh202. This is a outdoor direction bridge. I mention this device because a direction device may help in your situation. They have many other models of client-bridge devices if you want one with omni antenna.

What this does is uses the bridge to bring the connection into the router. From the routers standpoint it thinks it is connected to a cable modem or whatever it does not care the main connection is wireless. This means you can use the factory default software on everything and use the back up as it is designed. Many times you must manually switch it over these devices generally can not tell when the internet goes down by themselves.

 

[Jakeneon]

Thanks bill001g, I think you're onto something there. So if I'm understanding you correctly, I could try and get a wifi router that supports USB 4g dongles, but that also has a modem socket - then use a standalone wifi repeater with Ethernet port (I think I have a linksys one somewhere) connected over bridge mode to the main router. Having never had one of these wifi routers that supports 4g USB dongles, I'm not sure how much set-up is required to switch connections, or whether this is automatic. Also any ideas on recommended router that has good support for USB dongles (or built in 4g) + has a modem socket! one I looked at had 1 Ethernet port but no modem socket?

 

[bill001g]

The ones I know for sure support it are asus and tplink. Many other that have USB ports also support it. DD-WRT can be loaded on many platforms that have USB ports and you get the feature.

The only nasty part is you must look though the list of supported dongles. You must match both the ISP and the hardware. It is getting much better than a couple years ago. There is still a tiny number of ISP that will not release the information for the router manufacture to make the devices work.

I have only seen the discussion of auto failover in the DD-WRT forums and it was related to writing your own scripts. They were discussing a cable modem on the wan port rather than a wireless bridge. The router of course can detect if the wan port goes down ...ie is unplugged but how do you tell it no longer passes data. You would ping a remote host with a script ....or do it the real way with a routing protocl which is not a option for a consumer ISP connection.

 

[Jakeneon]

Thanks so much for your helpful answers. In theory a single piece of routing hardware could scan for available configured repeating networks and if none found fall back to a 4g modem whilst periodically scanning - but I agree that in bridge mode this would need to be a manual set-up. I will look to use my existing linkays wifi repeater with a wifi router and compatible 4g USB dongle - and hope to find a configuration with an easy enough interface for my girlfriend to use whils on set. Let me know if you have any more thoughts and otherwise will report back with my findings upon trialling a solution.