BT fttc and Wildanet fttp in the same house?

[clockworks]

We have BT broadband over copper, and a Deco mesh for WiFi.

Yesterday we had a power cut for 3 hours. I plugged the BT router into a Jackery power bank, which kept the broadband and the router's wifi going until power was restored.

3 hours later (6pm) we lost the broadband. Rang BT, "major outage" - looks like the exchange went down. Came back on just before 9am.

We get a very poor mobile signal, so we rely on WiFi calling, which obviously stopped working.
We used to use a mobile modem as a backup for Internet, but that stopped working when 3g was switched off. No chance of 4g or 5g here.

Things will get worse when we are forced onto digital voice. Lose the broadband, no comms at all.

A fibre company, Wildanet, have just put in their "cabinets" in our area, and we could get our service from them, full fibre to the house. £19 a month for a 100mbps data-only service.
We are thinking about getting thus as a backup, then switching, if the service proves to be reliable, when the BT contract is up for renewal.

Presumably it would be a new, totally separate, fibre connection into the house, alongside the BT copper?
Would it simply be a case of switching the main Deco mesh box between the BT hub and the fibre modem?
Or, even easier, running everything via our poe switch, and simply unplugging the BT hub and plugging in the fibre modem?

I'm guessing that having 2 routers plugged in all the time wouldn't work

[SteveKTMer]

DrayTek Vigor 2865 might work for you, it has connection for DSL from BT and ethernet from a second provider. Never used it myself but have known people who do and not heard anything negative, just does the job like most Draytek kit.

[.:ian:.]

If you get a dual wan router it will handle both connections, either fail over or load balanced across the two links.

https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/store/broadband-rou...

Not cheap though.

You could diy it with openwrt/opnsense and a 3 network card SFC f.e. https://openwrt.org/toh/friendlyarm/nanopi_r5s

You can have both routers on the lan at the same time, but they would need different ips on the same subnet, with only one of the two providing dhcp. To swap between them would require a change to the dhcp provided default gateway, which might be tricky if they do not allow you to change this parameter. You might need to provide a distinct dhcp server with a bit more control. Workable, maybe, but messy.

If you wanted to hand swap between the two, they would need to be configured identically, same ip, etc.

[clockworks]

I think £250 for a specific router is a bit too much to spend.


If I were to "hand swap", what would need to be configured? Just keeping the mesh running during the swap would be sufficient. Wired stuff is basically CCTV and NAS, which will work without an Internet connection. The main TV is wired, but could just be switched to WiFi.

Currently the main Deco is wired directly to the BT hub, then another ethernet cable goes to the switch. Most of the "slave" Decos are wired to the switch.

The BT hub and socket are in the middle of the house. Easiest way in for the fibre would be the garage. There are ethernet cables in the garage going up into the loft where the switch is located.

I'd like to just be able to unplug the main Deco from the BT router (which would isolate everything), and plug the fibre modem into the switch.

[clockworks]

I've just found out that Wildanet isn't fttp, it's FWA - fixed wireless access. They promise full-fibre speeds, not full fibre.

Sounds a bit sketchy?
We have a rubbish mobile signal, 2g voice and text only, and only if the weather is right and you stand by a window.

Seems odd that a relatively small local company can guarantee a better than 5g wireless service, when the big mobile operators can't.