My workplace has two WAN links, one of which we use as a backup. Both links terminate as Cat5. Unfortunately, we've had bad luck with "dual-WAN" routers, so our current failover plan is to unplug our consumer-class router from one modem and plug it into the other modem. Elegant, I know, but we're a small business, and BGP isn't really an option.
I'm looking for recommendations for a higher quality router that can automatically failover to a working WAN connection. The router needs to be able to handle at least 100 Mbps of throughput. A built-in firewall and DHCP server would be nice but probably isn't required.
We've already tried solutions from Linksys, Xincom, and Netgear and found them lacking. I can't get anyone from Peplink on the phone and that makes me uncomfortable. I've looked at routers from Cisco, HP, and Juniper, but don't really know what features are required to allow automatic WAN failover, or how I would go about actually configuring it.
Our budget is $3K USD max.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Best Answer
A pair of Cisco ASA 5505's will do this in a number of different ways. The simplest would be to have an ASA plugged into each of your ISP connections, designate one as primary, then configure the secondary to kick in if the primary link goes down. This also gives you hardware redundancy which you won't get with a single server (which is pretty much all your Dual-WAN routers were).
Chapter 10 of the Cisco Press Cisco ASA book (ISBN: 978-1-58705-819-6) describes the config pretty well, and I am sure you can find a Cisco partner who will take you through it at reasonable cost.
You might also be able to do something with HSRP/VRRP on two routers connected via a switch, and a good network engineer. Better than me, as I can't tell you how to do it :-)