Multiple fail over setup

A customer with a semi-rural office wanted an internet connection with multiple levels of fail over, but to keep the static IPv4 and IPv6 blocks routed over multiple connections for resilience. Being a rural location only (slow) ADSL is available natively, so alternatives were needed.

A Fibre Ethernet service is the ideal solution for a fast and reliable internet connection, but the customer wanted extra levels of resilience in case of a fault - a JCB cutting the fibre etc.

The office was installed with the following physical internet connections:

• A&A Fibre Ethernet (leased line) - 1G bearer
• Starlink satellite service (a non-A&A service)
• 2x A&A ADSL lines (one via BT backhaul, the other TalkTalk backhaul)

Naturally a FireBrick FB2900 was installed and configured to give the following levels of fail over.

1. Ethernet (Primary connection)
2. A&A L2TP over Starlink
3. A&A bonded ADSL
4. Starlink, native

With levels 1 through to 3, the static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are re-routed accordingly, so the IPs in use do not change when the Ethernet fails-over to the L2TP or bonded ADSL.

Fail over and re-routing happens in about 20 seconds.

This means that VPN points, and various servers/IoT/cctv devices are available over the same IP addresses in the event of the fibre ethernet service failing.

Status screen of the FireBrick showing the port status. (ADSL 2 being unplugged during some testing)