[ubuntu-uk] Using a 3G modem as a fallback

[Dan Fish]

Thanks for that. I think I may well go for a dedicated router. More
cost, but much less hassle to configure overall!

Dan
> Dan Fish wrote:
>   
>> Colin Law wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> 2009/11/10 Andrew Oakley <Andrew.Oakley at hesa.ac.uk>:
>>>   
>>>     
>>>       
>>>> I'm moving out of The Sticks, slightly to the west of nowhere in the
>>>> Cotswolds - which nevertheless already has 2.5Mbit ADSL - to the urban
>>>> metropolis that is a satellite village near Tewkesbury. With this comes
>>>> wonders of the modern age, the likes of which I have never experienced near
>>>> my home, such as street lighting, paved footpaths, gas that comes in pipes
>>>> instead of bottles, mains sewerage and 3G coverage.
>>>>
>>>> Given that I already have my Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server set up as a NAT router
>>>> for ADSL broadband, how difficult would it be to set up a cheapo 3G modem as
>>>> a fallback?
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>>       
>>>>         
>>> I would wait till you find out whether it is an issue, failures should
>>> be very rare.  Certainly for me they have not been often enough to
>>> justify the effort of an automated fallback system.  (A couple of
>>> times in three years).
>>>
>>> Colin
>>>
>>>   
>>>     
>>>       
>> Looking at a similar setup myself - moved to virgin cable and not sure
>> how stable it is. I've just setup a the zeroshell linux distro in a
>> virtual machine which is excellent for this sort of this
>> (http://www.zeroshell.net/eng/)
>> Dan
>>
>>   
>>     
>
> ADSL failures are not rare.  Reliability varies hugely and is geography 
> dependent. It's all about the distance you are from the telephone 
> exchange, which not only affects the download speed you get but also 
> affects line drop-outs as well.
> I live in a small village of 2000 people 20 miles south of Manchester. 
> The telephone exchange is in the next village (of 3000 people) about 2 
> mile away. Most of my village reports around 1Mbps data rates on 8Mbps 
> services.
> But for a number of years now I have been running a script that checks 
> if the line is up every 60 seconds. ( it just pings 3 places on the 
> Internet and lists the results). I have another script that gives me a 
> daily performance report.
> Here is the report since October 1st.   For each day it reports:
> Whether the line was up at midnight, has many line failures during the 
> day, the longest outage, the longest uptime and when that ended, the 
> daily availability.
> I have not had a single day without a failure this year, but good days 
> only fail a few times and usually for a few minutes, so I just wait. 
> Occasionally I wait an hour!
> It reports the end time of the longest uptime because I wondered if 
> there were any patterns ( I have a customer who believes his ADSL always 
> slows down at 16:30 every afternoon)
> I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the current average UK ADSL 
> speed is only around 3Mbps, so I suspect anyone getting less than that 
> are also getting occasional drop-outs. But if the drop-outs are less 
> that a couple of minutes and they can't see the lights on their ADSL 
> modem, they will probably think a website is down or reboot their computer.
>
> I have also looked at 3G to help matters. The best 3G I can get is 1.5 
> Mbps (on the "3" network using a HUAWEI E160G modem; I found a 1G/month 
> contract for £5/month)
> The E160G appears to have a socket for an external aerial, I wondered 
> about putting a high-gain unit on the roof pointing at the mast and what 
> speed I would get as a result ( anyone any experience here?), at the 
> moment I have to dangle the modem out of a window to get any signal at all.
> Finally I have no idea how reliable the 3G service would be.
>
> The Billion BiPAC 7402X has built in 3G fallback, I installed one for a 
> customer. You plug the 3G modem into a rear USB socket. But their list 
> price is around £98
>
> Hope this helps
> Chris Ray.
>
>
> Thu Oct 01 UP Failures:   6  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  551 
> ending@ 12:38:01  Availability: 99.24%
> Fri Oct 02 UP Failures:   8  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  366 
> ending@ 09:26:01  Availability: 98.82%
> Sat Oct 03 UP Failures:   9  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  374 
> ending@ 16:59:01  Availability: 98.82%
> Sun Oct 04 UP Failures:   9  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  818 
> ending@ 15:17:01  Availability: 98.82%
> Mon Oct 05 UP Failures:  10  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  321 
> ending@ 00:00:00  Availability: 98.61%
> Tue Oct 06 UP Failures:   5  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  426 
> ending@ 07:06:01  Availability: 99.24%
> Wed Oct 07 UP Failures:  14  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  396 
> ending@ 16:28:01  Availability: 98.19%
> Thu Oct 08 UP Failures:  20  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  479 
> ending@ 07:59:01  Availability: 97.22%
> Fri Oct 09 UP Failures:  20  Longest outage:  77  Longest Uptime:  372 
> ending@ 06:12:01  Availability: 87.15%
> Sat Oct 10 UP Failures:   3  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  692 
> ending@ 21:33:01  Availability: 99.51%
> Sun Oct 11 UP Failures:  16  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  503 
> ending@ 08:47:02  Availability: 97.78%
> Mon Oct 12 UP Failures:  14  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  607 
> ending@ 10:07:01  Availability: 98.12%
> Tue Oct 13 UP Failures:  10  Longest outage:   6  Longest Uptime:  479 
> ending@ 07:59:01  Availability: 98.12%
> Wed Oct 14 UP Failures:  30  Longest outage:   4  Longest Uptime:  213 
> ending@ 20:36:01  Availability: 96.18%
> Thu Oct 15 UP Failures:  22  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  484 
> ending@ 08:04:01  Availability: 96.94%
> Fri Oct 16 UP Failures:  18  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  377 
> ending@ 09:47:02  Availability: 97.64%
> Sat Oct 17 UP Failures:   5  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  491 
> ending@ 00:00:00  Availability: 99.51%
> Sun Oct 18 UP Failures:   5  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  599 
> ending@ 22:22:01  Availability: 99.24%
> Mon Oct 19 UP Failures:  24  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  370 
> ending@ 06:10:02  Availability: 97.08%
> Tue Oct 20 UP Failures:  28  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  256 
> ending@ 04:16:01  Availability: 96.25%
> Wed Oct 21 UP Failures:  17  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  525 
> ending@ 08:45:01  Availability: 97.92%
> Thu Oct 22 UP Failures:  13  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  657 
> ending@ 11:09:01  Availability: 98.33%
> Fri Oct 23 UP Failures:  16  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  390 
> ending@ 08:06:01  Availability: 97.92%
> Sat Oct 24 UP Failures:   9  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  317 
> ending@ 16:17:01  Availability: 98.75%
> Sun Oct 25 UP Failures:  10  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  366 
> ending@ 00:00:00  Availability: 98.61%
> Mon Oct 26 UP Failures:  22  Longest outage:   4  Longest Uptime:  510 
> ending@ 10:13:01  Availability: 96.81%
> Tue Oct 27 UP Failures:  17  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  321 
> ending@ 10:38:02  Availability: 97.71%
> Wed Oct 28 UP Failures:  11  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  239 
> ending@ 03:59:02  Availability: 98.61%
> Thu Oct 29 UP Failures:  16  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  535 
> ending@ 09:42:01  Availability: 98.06%
> Fri Oct 30 UP Failures:  38  Longest outage:   8  Longest Uptime:  318 
> ending@ 09:39:01  Availability: 93.12%
> Sat Oct 31 UP Failures:   9  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  483 
> ending@ 08:03:01  Availability: 98.68%
> Sun Nov 01 UP Failures:   6  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  502 
> ending@ 09:19:01  Availability: 99.17%
> Mon Nov 02 UP Failures:  52  Longest outage:   8  Longest Uptime:  404 
> ending@ 11:37:01  Availability: 90.49%
> Tue Nov 03 UP Failures:  95  Longest outage:   8  Longest Uptime:  560 
> ending@ 09:25:01  Availability: 81.53%
> Wed Nov 04 UP Failures:  75  Longest outage:  18  Longest Uptime:  564 
> ending@ 09:54:01  Availability: 83.89%
> Thu Nov 05 UP Failures:  71  Longest outage:  40  Longest Uptime:  388 
> ending@ 00:00:00  Availability: 77.36%
> Fri Nov 06 UP Failures:  89  Longest outage:  22  Longest Uptime:  247 
> ending@ 04:07:01  Availability: 72.43%
> Sat Nov 07 UP Failures:   6  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  412 
> ending@ 08:04:01  Availability: 99.17%
> Sun Nov 08 UP Failures:   5  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  833 
> ending@ 22:27:01  Availability: 99.24%
> Mon Nov 09 UP Failures:  33  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  270 
> ending@ 18:49:01  Availability: 95.62%
> Tue Nov 10 UP Failures:  13  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  369 
> ending@ 06:16:02  Availability: 98.19%
> Wed Nov 11 UP Failures:  14  Longest outage:   3  Longest Uptime:  484 
> ending@ 09:28:01  Availability: 98.06%
> Thu Nov 12 UP Failures:  22  Longest outage:   4  Longest Uptime:  323 
> ending@ 06:39:01  Availability: 96.81%
> Fri Nov 13 UP Failures:  22  Longest outage:   4  Longest Uptime:  447 
> ending@ 15:36:02  Availability: 96.74%
> Sat Nov 14 UP Failures:  27  Longest outage:   4  Longest Uptime:  306 
> ending@ 13:08:01  Availability: 96.04%
> Sun Nov 15 UP Failures:   7  Longest outage:   2  Longest Uptime:  327 
> ending@ 16:33:01  Availability: 99.03%
> Mon Nov 16 UP Failures:  53  Longest outage:  17  Longest Uptime:  487 
> ending@ 08:07:01  Availability: 82.99%
> Tue Nov 17 UP Failures:  26  Longest outage:   7  Longest Uptime:  358 
> ending@ 08:16:01  Availability: 96.04%
>
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