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How to configure connection failover on the D-Link G415 router

The D-Link EAGLE PRO AI G415 router incorporates two Internet WANs, the main one would be the Gigabit Ethernet port for the Internet WAN, the second is the 4G LTE connection through the 4G Cat4 modem that this wireless router incorporates. Thanks to these two WANs, the firmware will take care of choosing one or the other depending on whether the main one is available or not. If you want to know how to configure connection failover, to always be connected even if there are problems with the fixed connection, then you have all the details.

What is connection failover?

When we have a single Internet WAN in a router, there is no possibility of configuring a second WAN to come into operation if the first one goes down. However, this home 4G router has a total of two Internet WANs, the first one through the RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet port that we have on the back, and the second one is the 4G LTE connection itself through the modem. Cat4 integrated into the equipment. Thanks to this double WAN, we can configure the router so that the secondary or backup WAN starts working as soon as it detects that the main WAN has fallen or has some kind of problem.

When we configure connection failover on a router, we will obtain the following benefits:

  • We will always have an Internet connectioneither through the main network or the secondary network.
  • We do not have to perform a manual configuration of the router to move from the primary to the secondary WAN is a fully automatic process that is transparent to the user. If the main Internet network goes down, the second one automatically comes into operation, after a few seconds while the router waits for the main connection to be restored.

The process carried out by the router is as follows:

  1. Occurs some problem with the WAN major.
  2. The router constantly monitors internet connection via ICMP ping and/or DNS queries to detect if the connection has been dropped.
  3. In case you fall, wait a few seconds (which can be configured) to see if the main connection is recovered. In case he recovers, active monitoring will continue.
  4. If the main connection is not recoveredthe secondary connection comes into operation, in this case, the 4G LTE network.
  5. Finally, the router internally will continue to monitor the status of the main WANand if it works again, it will “change” the network again to go out to the Internet, this is perfect for not consuming all the data rate.

What to consider before configuring failover

If you are going to configure the failover of your connection, you should take into account the following:

  • Do not set very short check intervalsbecause you will be generating traffic unnecessarily, that is, you can configure that every 10 seconds it sends a DNS or ping request, but not every second.
  • Don’t set the number of retries too lowit is possible that due to the network a couple of packets are lost, and the router will mistakenly think that the Internet connection has been dropped, causing you to go to the second WAN of the Internet.
  • Do not set the intervals too high or many retries, otherwise it could take several minutes to “detect” the drop and proceed with the network change. In the medium term is virtue. Our recommendation is that you think about the maximum time you can be without an Internet connection, and based on that time, configure both the interval and the number of retries.

Now that you know how the failover of a connection works using a dual WAN router, we are going to show you what configuration options we have available in the D-Link router.

How to configure it on this router

If we go into the router in the “Configuration / Failover» We can activate or deactivate this function, in addition, we also have the possibility of configuring the behavior of the service. Next, we explain the parameters that we have available:

  • Check method: The manufacturer gives us several possibilities to verify if the connection has been dropped or is still working correctly, depending on the chosen method, the router will perform DNS queries or send ICMP pings to the different targets that we have available.
  • Target Host 1 and 2: we have to put the IP address to perform the ICMP ping, the most normal thing is to put the DNS of Google or Cloudflare. It is recommended to put these because they will always (or almost always) be working.
  • timeout limit: are the ms that we must wait before failing a check via DNS and/or ping.
  • retry times: are the times we retry the check via DNS or ping.
  • Interval: are the seconds between which the DNS and/or ping checks are sent.

If we want the router to detect as soon as possible if there is a drop, it is important that the interval be short to check more frequently that everything is correct. We must also take retries into account, if we define many retries we have to wait longer until the maximum is reached and then the second WAN starts working.

It is not recommended to adjust the interval and retries too much because it is possible that the network at a certain moment falls for 10 seconds, and then it works fine again, we must also adjust these parameters to our needs, if we want that as soon as a packet is lost change to the secondary WAN we can do it, although we do not recommend it because surely the network will recover quickly and we will be in a changing state between the primary and secondary WAN.

In the following video you can see all the configuration options of this D-Link EAGLE PRO AI G415 4G router.

As you can see, the connection failover functionality is really interesting for scenarios where we cannot be without an Internet connection, for example, in second homes where we have an alarm, IP cameras and another series of devices to guarantee home security. . Failover is also very important if you telework from home, because in this way you will not have any type of interruption.

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