Does the 4g backup dongle ever work?

[Tiggerfan]

We have had a bunch of broadband failures over the last few days and it is ongoing.  The 4g dongle has never taken over.  I raised this on a help call a couple of days ago and was told it is slow on the first fail but after that it happens fast. I believed this story but but it furns out false. The dongle has never worked.  Currently using my phone as hot spot so it's evident the local network 4g/5g is working ok.

[prs1000]

Our connection went down a couple of weeks ago. The 4G back up kicked in pretty quickly and did the job well until the main connection was restored.

Now I just need to work out how to use it with a third party router.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

If its like ours the fibre is so slow its unuseable and cant load anything but its still technically connected.

I just pull the ethernet cable to the router and it switchs pretty fast to the mobile backup.

Currently getting 0.5mbps upload on our 900 line. yay

[Tiggerfan]

Thanks for that tip. I never thought to try pulling the connection. Makes good sense as the fibre interface looked like it was alive with green lights. Just no internet.

[Jayach]

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@Tiggerfan wrote:

Thanks for that tip. I never thought to try pulling the connection. Makes good sense as the fibre interface looked like it was alive with green lights. Just no internet.

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That does sound like a problem with authentication at Vodafone. If the router believes the broadband line is up, it won't see a reason to switch to the 4g backup.

Try calling Vodafone, 08080 034 515 is the number I use, but I'm on FTTC so don't know if there is a better number for FTTP users.

Or use live chat: https://www.vodafone.co.uk/bbservcd/

[Tiggerfan]

Yet another broadband failure last night.  Again the dongle is no use.  I spent 2 hours on the helpline this morning, no fix, now awaiting engineer home visit appointment.

 I asked several times if the dongle can be activated.   The answer was " no, as there is an external connection so the dongle would not pick up".  Not logical to my mind.

I feel this is pretty close to mis-selling.

The old BT arrangement is far superior, where you have a completely separate mini router with a battery built in.

[Anonymous]

@prs1000  I use the 4G Dongle on my Asus RT-AX11000 . This is possible because this  router has Dual WAN and will accept a USB WAN.  I have configured it only to trigger on failover, not in load-balance mode. It works nicely when I disconnect my WAN ethernet from the ONT box. 

What's your router?

[prs1000]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@prs1000  I use the 4G Dongle on my Asus RT-AX11000 . This is possible because this  router has Dual WAN and will accept a USB WAN.  I have configured it only to trigger on failover, not in load-balance mode. It works nicely when I disconnect my WAN ethernet from the ONT box. 

What's your router?

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It's a TP Link AX1800. I was looking at maybe getting a new router that supported failover. In the end I figured I have had one outage in the last few years and I could easily plug in the VF router if needed. I'd prefer to get a suitable router eventually.

[prs1000]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@prs1000  I use the 4G Dongle on my Asus RT-AX11000 . This is possible because this  router has Dual WAN and will accept a USB WAN.  I have configured it only to trigger on failover, not in load-balance mode. It works nicely when I disconnect my WAN ethernet from the ONT box. 

What's your router?

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Just checked out your router. For the price its a bargain. I'll give that a try, thanks!

[Anonymous]

@prs1000 wrote, "Just checked out your router. For the price its a bargain. I'll give that a try, thanks!"

That model, three years ago, was top end of the non-commercial market and was pretty expensive. Amazon have it at over £400 still!  Are you looking at a used one perhaps?  It has been superseded by the Pro version. Both are outstanding routers especially for gaming and for being iMesh hubs if you have some old Asus iMesh routers. They will both take Merlin firmware if you are really into doing all your own configs.  Don't bother with QoS though unless your broadband is <500Mbps.