Does anyone know of a good program/router or whatever else it would take to have a back up internet service provide my network with net access should my main source go down? I know there are the routers which will use dsl or cable which would be great, however I don't have access to either service. Currently I am using an extremely disappointing Direcway sat system for internet with a dial up back up. My network for the most part is a wireless router with all computers currently being connected via wireless connection. I have my main dial up on my server which is great as I can use the dial up when the sat is down, but have no net access on my other systems. I could set proxy settings or windows net sharing when the sat is down and change them back when it's up but that is such a huge waste of time. Anyone know of anyway to make it automatic? One service is down so computers on the network attempt to connect to the default backup internet service? All computers are currently using Windows XP and or Windows 2000 Pro. Would a linux setup possibly be a solution? Thank you in advance.
There are broadband routers that have a built-in dialer for a back-up connection that would be the cleanest solution. There are also freeware programs that will automatically dial from the server to connect to internet if any computer on the LAN needs a connection. Those programs would be used in conjunction with Windows connection sharing. There's one called Network Connect. Also EServ (which is a bundle of fun) also has that functionality (shareware).
Thank you for the info. The sat though doesn't actually use the broadband connection instead using the standard lan connector making it a big more confusing. If it worked the same way as dsl/cable it would be great but sadly it does not. Thank you for the links, I will be checking them out.
Whatever device you use to receive the SAT connection has a LAN output that you just connect to your computer or router? If that's the case you can get a router that has a dialer for backup purposes and run your connection through it. If the WAN connection ceases to have internet access, it dials automatically. Also, if you want to route all traffic thru your server, Network Connect should do the job.
The sat connects to my router via a lan port not wan, it also takes over by default as my dhcp server for my network so technically my main computer which I consider my server for serving files, backups, etc has no control over this if I'm following correctly. It's a real odd setup that direcway does, totally different than what I was expecting.
Get a decent firewall/router and connect the SAT connection to the WAN port on that router. The router will connect to the SAT via DHCP and if the router has a dialer, it can be configured to dial if the WAN port doesn't have a signal. You can then connect your wireless AP, other HUBs computers etc to the LAN ports of the router.
Thanks for the info, I'm going to take what you told me and see if I can find something. I do have a wan port on my current router, actually have 2 of them 'routers' and neither of them will allow the sat to work off of the wan, only lan. Maybe something with the way direcway routes the network traffic? I'm sure there has to be something with a dialer though that is direcway compliant, or at least I'd think so. Thank you again.
You could plug the SAT into a LAN port on router #1 and then pull a patch cable from another LAN port on router #1 and send it to Router #2 (to the WAN port) Router #2 would also be the router that dials backup if there is no signal on the WAN port. ... Maybe? Good luck getting it to work