Load balancing router

[El Znorro]

I just got a 4G router and my internet speed has increased from 5 mb/s to 35 mb/s (download) and even the ping acceptable, all set to browse the dankest memes. My only problems are the occasional loss of connection or extreme drops in speed, these occur like at max once per day, but when they do they're at the most inconvenient times. 

 

I know about load balancing routers but my knowledge of networking is pretty basic, so i'm not even sure if this is the best solution and what to look for. As far as i've seen the TP-LINK TL-R470T+ should be a good solution for me. I could hook this up to the 4G router (Huawei E5186) and old ADSL line, and let it use the ADSL connection when the 4G speed drops below that of the ADSL. I think this will work for me, but I also want my wireless network to profit from the back up connection. Of course I could hookup a wireless acces point, but i'd prefer a load balancing router with wireless.

 

So at the end my questions are: What is a good load balancing router with wireless, Or is there a better solution for my problem?

[Levisallanon]

Unless you are going for real high grade enterprise equipment where you can have SLA management on your routers you will still have this downtime with the load balancing routers.
What you want is a fallback line. But it would still take a short time for the router to know for sure your "main" line is down before it switches over to the backup line. even when using eigrp or ospf it could result in some lost packages. I don't know how long your drop is now and how much you lose by this.

[mynameisjuan]

Much easier to just find out why your connection is dropping, maybe try moving the 4g router and see how it works? Load balancing is a lot of work to setup properly. I mean with OSPF you can get the drop down to 3 secs but if you load balance off speed you will be seeing it switch a lot which would cause you to notice much more of an issue. 

[El Znorro]

7 hours ago, Levisallanon said:

Unless you are going for real high grade enterprise equipment where you can have SLA management on your routers you will still have this downtime with the load balancing routers.
What you want is a fallback line. But it would still take a short time for the router to know for sure your "main" line is down before it switches over to the backup line. even when using eigrp or ospf it could result in some lost packages. I don't know how long your drop is now and how much you lose by this.

Okay, thanks for the heads up, good to know I won't be able to get a perfect backup. 

 

These drops vary from a few seconds to max 10 minutes. I don't lose a lot it's more the inconvenence of the drop during things like Skype calls or gaming. But I also just thought of the fact that I depend on a 4G connection, these can be unreliable at times due to malfunctions at the end of the provider. The 3-10 seconds drops will be unavoidable, this will be something that ill have to accept. But i'd still pay €45,- for the TP-Link to avoid the major outages.

[El Znorro]

6 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

Much easier to just find out why your connection is dropping, maybe try moving the 4g router and see how it works? Load balancing is a lot of work to setup properly. I mean with OSPF you can get the drop down to 3 secs but if you load balance off speed you will be seeing it switch a lot which would cause you to notice much more of an issue. 

I already tested 4 different locations, it's in the position with the least drops and highest speeds of all. These drops just occur when the 4G router losses connection, the provider said these can happen and there's nothing you can do about it. Ill have to learn to live with the occasional 3 second drop, but i'd like to prefent any drops longer than this. So if I understood you correclty it's better to use it as a back up line and not let it switch on the basis of speeds?

[Guest]

Could just grab an EdgeRouter Lite, a Dovado Tiny AC in bridge mode and then whatever other modem you needed for the 2nd connection.