Comment by dagmx

11 hours ago

The fallback support for UniFi setups will be awesome.

I’m honestly tempted to get it for my house. My ISP downtime is pretty low but it does happen every once in a while, at the most inopportune times, which impedes working from home.

Having a wireless backup would hopefully cover those downtimes

22 comments

dagmx

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sschueller  10 hours ago

I have a wireless backup[1] using Vyos[2] and a 5G router provided for free by the 5G service provider for those rare moments when both fiber links are dead.

At the same time I would never recommend anyone get 5G internet as their primary service if you have other options and especially not from one of these cheap providers.

[1] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/wiring-a-home-with-fiber/

[2] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/vyos-router-update/#wan-f...

  • sofixa  9 hours ago

    Hey, another person running VyOS!

    How are you handling updates? Do you update on a fixed cadence, or do you build your own LTS? Or do you just take a random nightly and stick to it?

    • sschueller  9 hours ago

      I just did the update to 2025-Q2 (I use the quarterly stream build).

      Initially I thought this is going to be a huge pain. I have many interfaces and also pass-through hardware like the SFP28 card. I made a copy of my primary router vm and added fake interfaces with the same MAC addresses. I then went through the update procedure which was very simple.

      in vyos vm:

        wget https://community-downloads.vyos.dev/stream/1.5-stream-2025-Q2/vyos-1.5-stream-2025-Q2-generic-amd64.iso -o vyos-1.5-stream-2025-Q2.iso
  add system image /mnt/iso/vyos-1.5-stream-2025-Q2.iso
  # follow prompts
  reboot
  # boot screen will offer two version now, old and new

      That was it and it worked. So from now on I know I can just take a snapshot of my vm and do it directly on the main vm without making a copy.

      You do loose any custom configs you may have. In my case it was fstab changes and my cron entries.

sgarland  6 hours ago

Forgive me, I didn’t watch the videos: is that what the Dream Router supports - normal wired WAN uplink, plus 5G failover? If so, yes, that’s very attractive.

I have a T-Mobile backup home internet plan, and when I had a rack set up, it was my failover from fiber. The Dream Machine Pro did auto failover and failback flawlessly. However, I recently moved, and am redoing my homelab so I have no rack right now; internet is from a Dream Router, so I don’t have auto-failover. I doubt I’d buy this for the small window of time I expect to be in this situation, but if you didn’t have or want a rack, an AIO with failover would be great.

  • kmfrk  6 hours ago

    Yep, that's one of the main reasons people are excited for this. Instead of a dedicated ISP modem with 5G, you can just use this, plug it into a gateway WAN port set up as the secondary failover connection, and you'll have a backup if you get knocked offline.

    https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052548713-WAN-Failo...

    The 5G unit itself also has its own failover with support for two 5G SIMs.

    "All are equipped with dual SIM slots, with one SIM replaceable by eSIM, and are fully unlocked: any major carrier, any type of deployment, with one piece of hardware."

    You can also see the excitement in the subreddit where people are already in the Unifi ecosystem: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1pe5xh4/explore_p....

ansgri  10 hours ago

There are now quite a few options for wifi APs with cellular backup. I use TP-Link, and it's ok for the price, I guess, and supports adding OneMesh range extenders.

The problem with this setup for me is that it doesn't work with uplink that sometimes becomes unstable yet nominally working, and in general LTE fallback triggers slowly.

Are there any prosumer-friendly options for connection bundling, which can balance uplinks continuously?

qwerpy  11 hours ago

We had a 5 day power outage (Bellevue WA, not exactly in the middle of nowhere) and after 2 days both the cable internet and cell towers went down, so even 5G would not have helped. I had backup power but no internet. On the way back from Best Buy with my new starlink, everything came back online of course. But now I’m ready for the next multi day outage.

I have a network cable from my secondary WAN port on my dream machine running to my first story roof where there’s a wall mount ready for starlink to be plopped in.

  • lostlogin  11 hours ago

    I’ve made the second WAN a 10gb uplink.

    I wish there were cheaper 10gb switch from Ubiquiti. The link Agg is good, but still pricey.

  • thatwasunusual  11 hours ago

    > after 2 days both the cable internet and cell towers went down, so even 5G would not have helped.

    I discovered the same thing the hard way myself recently (in Norway); turns out that cell towers only has enough battery for ~24-36 hours (if you're lucky).

    However, someone messing with the fibre to my house is a bigger possibility than power outage, so I'll probably end up with this 5G product. :)

botto  11 hours ago

Yeah, the fact you can use any of the ports on a dream machine as a WAN (its not optimal, but is an option) makes it really easy to have a couple of fallbacks if you really need high redundancy.