What suggestions do you guys have for a backup WIFI solution for our office if the primary WIFI goes down or in the event of outages in the area due to bad weather or major events?

Is something like Starlink our only option here?

How many people are you trying to cover?

40 or so

There are many levels when looking at redundancy/resiliency, and there are many questions to better understand your situation.

There are fixed wireless solutions, there are 4G/5G solutions, you could look at simply getting secondary internet solution, etc.

My first questions would be regarding your current WAN/LAN. Understanding where you currently sit and your needs as far as public IPs, remote workers, etc, is extremely important.

Budget for various plans comes down to what downtime is acceptable to you and what is available in your area.

That may be a little more than makes sense for this, but one place I worked (all remote) had everyone get their own mobile hotspot as a backup internet source for their home office and gave us a stipend to cover the cost.

It was useful in that we also had it when we traveled and didn't have to put company machines on hotel internet. I'm guessing that's a bit more than you want to spend.

Some of the cell carriers might have a version of their cell based internet service you could use for business. I haven't looked into this deeply but it looks like T-Mobile makes the 5G internet available to business.

Otherwise yeah it's probably Starlink for wireless.

I've also installed multiple carriers at offices where you can verify the inbound is physically different out on the street.

Lathspell said:

---

There are many levels when looking at redundancy/resiliency, and there are many questions to better understand your situation.

There are fixed wireless solutions, there are 4G/5G solutions, you could look at simply getting secondary internet solution, etc.

My first questions would be regarding your current WAN/LAN. Understanding where you currently sit and your needs as far as public IPs, remote workers, etc, is extremely important.

Budget for various plans come down to what downtime is acceptable to you and what is available in your area.

---

That's a great outline to help think through it!

aggieactor01 said:

---

I've also installed multiple carriers at offices where you can verify the inbound is physically different out on the street.

---

Yeah, but that could get expensive unless it was already pulled in that way. We also had a customer with two separate dedicated circuits from different carriers, and we made the special request to pull the new carrier through a different MPOE on the other side of the building.

That's getting into some intense resiliency, though.

If the current primary isn't dedicated, I would recommend looking into that and just getting a cheap coax or ABF circuit for a secondary. That level of redundancy is usually good enough for 95% of companies out there.

My questions would also be in regards to the current LAN/WLAN setup. When the OP says "wifi", i'm assuming he just means internet services, and is not actually using something like Comcast wifi to handle 40 end users. If that is the case, then you are looking at needing to implement a different wifi solution to separate it from Comcast or whichever carrier is currently providing it.

StarLink doesn't have enough satellites in orbit to maintain service during heavy storms. It has improved significantly over the years, but a few days ago, I experienced a 15+ minute outage due to a severe storm. After the storm, however, it would be a great option.

When there is a major outtage or storm like a disaaster, 95% of the general public is going to use cell service.

Those are going to get jammed, have issues, go down.

Starlink is your answer if you *really* care about that.

If you're a guy that just wants it for a rainy day - spend the $600 on a Starlink kit, and get a ROAM account - which is basically a "pay as you use it, turn it on and off" account.

If you aren't planning for things like diasters and just for bad local internet/cable, then get a Unifi Dream Machine Pro router for $400, get a TMobile Hotspot router with unlimited bandwidth for $60/month that has an ethernet port on it... and plug that into the Dream Machine as WAN2 and your local cable/whatever as WAN1 and boom - dual failover. This will cost you about $140/month ($80/spectrum + $60/tmobile)

tfunk02 said:

---

StarLink doesn't have enough satellites in orbit to maintain service during heavy storms. It has improved significantly over the years, but a few days ago, I experienced a 15+ minute outage due to a severe storm. After the storm, however, it would be a great option.

---

100% depends on where you are.

My company sells Starlink services to multiple counties out here in Texas that use them on their emergency first responder trailers. Sure, they have some wireless pucks to talk to the wireless carriers... but they know those are going to get jammed/fail during a big storm or disaster/outage.... and Starlink or C-Band (super expensive) is the way to go.

I'm guessing they are using the commercial dishes then? How much do those cost? I think the business one is $2,500. My experiences are just with the Gen2 regular residential one with an extremely clear view of the sky.

tfunk02 said:

---

I'm guessing they are using the commercial dishes then? How much do those cost? I think the business one is $2,500. My experiences are just with the Gen2 regular residential one with an extremely clear view of the sky.

---

Nope, just the regular residential ones are fine. Why? Easy... because we do a special build where we make a 'kit' with a Pelican Case (strong, waterproof, great for travel) that includes :

1. Standard Kit
2. Extra long cable (150ft)
3. Network Adapter (depending on Gen)
4. An everyday netgear router (in case they need more ether's or don't have a router in their emergency truck/trailer/whatever and want one)
5. Power Strip (again, in case they need one for some reason)
6. Apple Tag (to help find who has it for businesses, or where you left it in warehouse, etc)

This is the case we use : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0029Q7AL0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And we have customized foam from a local foam company put in that form-fits all those parts.

And boom... you have this cool go-kit that you can run around with wherever you need... emergency services LOVE them. The City, County, and other Emergency Response units get them from us... and we support them with extra 24/7 IT support in case they need, something they REQUIRE being "Emergency Services" and all that Starlink doesn't provide.