Two broadband signals into one network

[Northernboy]

I installed my Starlink kit today, and while it’s faster than Plusnet, it does go dead for a good few seconds quite often.

I now have a fast but slightly flakey Starlink signal, and a relatively pedestrian but rock solid wired one, and it’d be great if I could get the best of both.

Is there any way to have each packet sent out via the best route, using Starlink for the 99% of the time that it’s up, and Plusnet for the downtime?

[BigTZ4M]

Yes. You want a router that supports dual WAN. You can then set rules that either balances the requests between them or uses one primarily and auto fails over to the other in the event of unavailability. I do this with a free product called pfSense on a £200 mini PC with multiple network ports (you’ll need at least three). However it’s not for the faint hearted if you don’t like networking (although there are a lot of YouTube videos to guide you). Draytek do dual WAN routers that are probably a bit easier to configure and I think Ubiquiti too. The there’s lots of very expensive kit beyond that designed for enterprises.

[Northernboy]

BigTZ4M said:

Yes. You want a router that supports dual WAN. You can then set rules that either balances the requests between them or uses one primarily and auto fails over to the other in the event of unavailability. I do this with a free product called pfSense on a £200 mini PC with multiple network ports (you’ll need at least three). However it’s not for the faint hearted if you don’t like networking (although there are a lot of YouTube videos to guide you). Draytek do dual WAN routers that are probably a bit easier to configure and I think Ubiquiti too. The there’s lots of very expensive kit beyond that designed for enterprises.

Thanks, I think that I’ll need to do some research then.

Networking is my Achilles’ heel, unfortunately, it’s one area of technology that I’ve never learned well.

Edited to add, is this the sort of thing?

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/business-networking/loa...

Edited by Northernboy on Thursday 18th March 23:02

[Phunk]

Northernboy said:

BigTZ4M said:

Yes. You want a router that supports dual WAN. You can then set rules that either balances the requests between them or uses one primarily and auto fails over to the other in the event of unavailability. I do this with a free product called pfSense on a £200 mini PC with multiple network ports (you’ll need at least three). However it’s not for the faint hearted if you don’t like networking (although there are a lot of YouTube videos to guide you). Draytek do dual WAN routers that are probably a bit easier to configure and I think Ubiquiti too. The there’s lots of very expensive kit beyond that designed for enterprises.

Thanks, I think that I’ll need to do some research then.

Networking is my Achilles’ heel, unfortunately, it’s one area of technology that I’ve never learned well.

Edited to add, is this the sort of thing?

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/business-networking/loa...

Edited by Northernboy on Thursday 18th March 23:02

We had one of those, we had two pretty slow broadband lines shared between 5 computers in an office. Worked well

[Northernboy]

Phunk said:

We had one of those, we had two pretty slow broadband lines shared between 5 computers in an office. Worked well

Thanks, it seems quite simple and cheap, so I’ll give it a try.

Next bit of the project is removing the satellite dish from a table and erecting a pole to get it above the roof.

[bobthemonkey]

Northernboy said:

Thanks, it seems quite simple and cheap, so I’ll give it a try.

Next bit of the project is removing the satellite dish from a table and erecting a pole to get it above the roof.

Just remember that it’s wired only so if you want Wi-Fi you will need a separate AP to broadcast a network that is using the merged internet connections.

As someone up thread suggests, you could do with a Draytek box that would replace the modem/router for your plus net connection and the starlink connection at the same time.

Edited by bobthemonkey on Thursday 18th March 23:31

[megaphone]

The TP-Link load balancing routers are very good, reasonably simple to set up.

[Northernboy]

bobthemonkey said:

Just remember that it’s wired only so if you want Wi-Fi you will need a separate AP to broadcast a network that is using the merged internet connections.

As someone up thread suggests, you could do with a Draytek box that would replace the modem/router for your plus net connection and the starlink connection at the same time.

Edited by bobthemonkey on Thursday 18th March 23:31

Thanks. I’ve Ubiquiti access points on each floor, so this is only to feed the signal into the main Ethernet switch.

[BigTZ4M]

I don't know that TP-Link router but a quick scan of the manual suggests it'll do what you want and I've used plenty of other TP-Link equipment I like so I think you'll be fine. It supports PPPoE so will play nicely with Plusnet, but this leads me to offer a note of caution.

While you can get it to work fine, generally you don't really want three routers on your network (Plusnet, TP-Link and Starlink). You'll have a double NAT situation which isn't so much of a problem with Starlink since it is already CGNAT but is less desirable and very avoidable with the Plusnet side of things. Plus if you have them all as DHCP servers you could accidentally mis configure something that leads to devices on the network obtaining different DHCP leases and not seeing one another.

Ideally you'd replace the Plusnet router with a VDSL modem. You can buy something like a Draytek Vigor 130 for this or get just as good a result from a second hand BTOpenreach modem from ebay for £15 (or maybe you have an old one sitting around). Plug that into your TP-Link's first WAN interface and it can instantiate a connection on Plusnet using PPPoE. Then I'd also maybe take the Starlink router out of the equation since you can plug the dish straight into the second WAN port on the TPLink. This doesn't need any extra equipment but does require fiddling about and creating virtual interfaces in your TP-Link router. I've also read reports that getting the stats off the dish becomes either difficult to configure or not possible. It is less important IMO to take out the starlink router because it is already CGNAT and difficult to run services behind anyway. Adding in an extra layer of NAT isn't going to hinder you like it might on the Plusnet connection. Just be sure that whatever routers you leave in place you don't get them leasing DHCP to your inner network devices and certainly don't use the WIFi on any of them.

[megaphone]

You can remove the Starlink router and just plug the WAN direct from the power supply block into you own router.

[Northernboy]

BigTZ4M said:

I don't know that TP-Link router but a quick scan of the manual suggests it'll do what you want and I've used plenty of other TP-Link equipment I like so I think you'll be fine. It supports PPPoE so will play nicely with Plusnet, but this leads me to offer a note of caution.

While you can get it to work fine, generally you don't really want three routers on your network (Plusnet, TP-Link and Starlink). You'll have a double NAT situation which isn't so much of a problem with Starlink since it is already CGNAT but is less desirable and very avoidable with the Plusnet side of things. Plus if you have them all as DHCP servers you could accidentally mis configure something that leads to devices on the network obtaining different DHCP leases and not seeing one another.

Ideally you'd replace the Plusnet router with a VDSL modem. You can buy something like a Draytek Vigor 130 for this or get just as good a result from a second hand BTOpenreach modem from ebay for £15 (or maybe you have an old one sitting around). Plug that into your TP-Link's first WAN interface and it can instantiate a connection on Plusnet using PPPoE. Then I'd also maybe take the Starlink router out of the equation since you can plug the dish straight into the second WAN port on the TPLink. This doesn't need any extra equipment but does require fiddling about and creating virtual interfaces in your TP-Link router. I've also read reports that getting the stats off the dish becomes either difficult to configure or not possible. It is less important IMO to take out the starlink router because it is already CGNAT and difficult to run services behind anyway. Adding in an extra layer of NAT isn't going to hinder you like it might on the Plusnet connection. Just be sure that whatever routers you leave in place you don't get them leasing DHCP to your inner network devices and certainly don't use the WIFi on any of them.

Thanks for this.

I already have a Draytek 130 for my ADSL. It’s running in Bridge mode, with an Apple base station providing the password etc. I’ve been meaning to reconfigure the modem to connect itself, but haven’t got round to it.

The whole house has Ethernet running throughout, so the plan is to attach the Starlink modem (if that’s the right word) to the TP link box using this Ethernet, and then go from the LAN port of the Tp Link box to the big, racked Ethernet switch which will then distribute the signal to the Ubiquiti access points.

It all seems so easy...

Next issue is that I’m getting three hours of blocked signal on the dish, so need to shove it up a big pole. I need to decide if I continue down this route or instead use my Plusnet and my Three 4G router which gets a steady 15Mb with the new switch instead. If that’s good enough it’ll be worth returning the dish and canceling the extra £90/month that it’s costing.

[BigTZ4M]

I feel your pain with hesitancy. I have acceptable FTTC and have done multi WAN with 4G before when our fibre performance wasn't so good. I'm now umming and ahhing about adding Starlink into the mix. Part of it is just that it's new and shiny and exciting but equally I'm seeing some reports saying in the UK recent firmware upgrades are giving 400Mbps and the price is sort of uncomfortable rather than horrendous but if the speeds keep going up the way they are then I want it. If I had to put money on who out of Musk, BTOpenreach or the UK Government are going to get me gigabit first then my money is on Musk provided he doesn't go bankrupt. Plus my inner geek likes being an early adopter.

[Northernboy]

BigTZ4M said:

I feel your pain with hesitancy. I have acceptable FTTC and have done multi WAN with 4G before when our fibre performance wasn't so good. I'm now umming and ahhing about adding Starlink into the mix. Part of it is just that it's new and shiny and exciting but equally I'm seeing some reports saying in the UK recent firmware upgrades are giving 400Mbps and the price is sort of uncomfortable rather than horrendous but if the speeds keep going up the way they are then I want it. If I had to put money on who out of Musk, BTOpenreach or the UK Government are going to get me gigabit first then my money is on Musk provided he doesn't go bankrupt. Plus my inner geek likes being an early adopter.

Part of the hesitancy is that we are apparently getting fibre later this year, but I think it’s going to be quite difficult to have BT bring it into the house. I’m in a small street where we all share the comms room in the basement level car park, and people tend to look at the dense wiring and walk away.

A rock-solid 25Mb is enough, but 14 isn’t.

[anonymoususer]

Another vote for TP - Link

We had a best of one in an office and it was astonshingly brilliant.
It was only exchanged because its WAN Port could only support up to 100MBPS speed
Cracking piece of kit

[Northernboy]

anonymoususer said:

Another vote for TP - Link

We had a best of one in an office and it was astonshingly brilliant.
It was only exchanged because its WAN Port could only support up to 100MBPS speed
Cracking piece of kit

I was wondering whether to future proof it by getting the gigabit version, but think for home use I’ll be OK for a while with 100M.

[BigTZ4M]

Northernboy said:

I was wondering whether to future proof it by getting the gigabit version, but think for home use I’ll be OK for a while with 100M.

But Starlink can offer you in excess of 100Mbps now potentially so why cripple it? That seems crazy

[Northernboy]

BigTZ4M said:

But Starlink can offer you in excess of 100Mbps now potentially so why cripple it? That seems crazy

It’s only giving me 50-80Mb at the moment, and I could get the 100Mb switch quicker than the faster one. I want to check out how my previous system works so that if it’s OK I can return the dish before it’s sat outside for too long.

[anonymoususer]

Northernboy said:

anonymoususer said:

Another vote for TP - Link

We had a best of one in an office and it was astonshingly brilliant.
It was only exchanged because its WAN Port could only support up to 100MBPS speed
Cracking piece of kit

I was wondering whether to future proof it by getting the gigabit version, but think for home use I’ll be OK for a while with 100M.

This was the one we had
TL-R4299G



Get the gigabit version. - You may kick yourself in a few .... months ? time if you find your speeds going up

[Murph7355]

Northernboy said:

Thanks. I’ve Ubiquiti access points on each floor, so this is only to feed the signal into the main Ethernet switch.

If you have Ubiquiti access points, the Ubiquiti USG does load balancing between two WAN connections in a similar way to the one you linked to.

Mine was a bit fiddly to set up with an EE 4G connection as one of the WAN connections, but since that was solved it's been working very well.

I've latterly been digging into the command line to tweak the way the load balancing works - you can do some pretty useful things with it.

Slippery slope - you can then get a Ubiquiti PoE switch to complete the setup - has some nice management interface capabilities, stats etc etc.

[Magnum 475]

Murph7355 said:

If you have Ubiquiti access points, the Ubiquiti USG does load balancing between two WAN connections in a similar way to the one you linked to.

Mine was a bit fiddly to set up with an EE 4G connection as one of the WAN connections, but since that was solved it's been working very well.

I've latterly been digging into the command line to tweak the way the load balancing works - you can do some pretty useful things with it.

Slippery slope - you can then get a Ubiquiti PoE switch to complete the setup - has some nice management interface capabilities, stats etc etc.

This is the route I’ve gone down. Initial USG setup was a pain, as my network isn’t in the USG’s default IP range, and it kept resetting itself to the default. A few minutes of ‘RTFM’ soon solved this though. So far, so good. Load balanced well and some very good features.

Access point upgrade next to replace my aged Netgear APs with Ubiquity as soon as their WiFi 6 APs are available.