Hi all,

Hope you are keeping well.

I need a bit of an advice really. We currently have a 1Gbps circuit leased line utilising full 1Gbps upload/download. Few days ago the line went down and it took the ISP nearly a day and a half to bring the line back on (we didn't experience any line drop for well over 10 years with the ISP, this was the first time ever). This made me enquire about failover line but the quotation didn't justify the expense. I then started my search for a 4G LTE failover router and hence Draytek.

Currently we have everything from servers to VOIP phones on the fibre line and so when connectivity dropped all our phones went down too. I did try to tether our Yealink handset using their WiFi dongle to my Giffgaff mobile network and although it found and connected the handset to my mobile, it never registered the handset so we couldn't use the phone. I initially thought 5060 port is blocked on Giffgaff network but by looking at the forum, it doesn't seem to be the case. So am not sure why it never registered. In the end I downloaded a WebEx app on my phone and used that as an alternative.

My idea is to use Draytek as a failover using 4G LTE on a pay as you go SIM like a Giffgaff or EE. This will be effective and with minimal overhead cost.

I have been looking at Draytek but not really sure what the difference is between Vigor 2927LAC and Vigor 2866LAC and whether one is more relevant over the other considering our fibre network. I am also not sure if the handsets would work even with such setup considering they never worked using tethering, after all the setup would use the same Giffgaff/EE network in the end.

In summary, we need a cost effective failover means to support some of our critical services including VOIP phones.

I'd really appreciate your kind advice and guidance in this setup.

Many thanks in advance

Kind regards

Jay

The device should be Vigor 2927LAC. This doesn't include a DSL modem (which you don't need if you use a fibre connection which has its own modem) and has faster throughput on the WAN ports.

Having a DrayTek would allow you to control the failover (& failback) and such things as routing based on source/destination or port.

Port 5060 should work but the tethering may have introduced some issues. Is the VoIP locked down to a particular IP address?
One issue with PAYG SIM's is that they don't offer static IP's so would be double NAT'ing so it would be difficult to serve inbound traffic.

It would be a case of trying it & testing unless someone else has this configuration working.

Also worth remembering that some PAYG sims if not used for a period of time are cut off, so your fail over might not actually work when you need it.