Hello,
I’m working on improving the internet setup at a couple of gas stations I’m involved with. For this post I’m going to refer only to one of our locations as I’m setting it up first then I’ll mirror the setup to the other location later.
At this site the only wired internet option available is DSL with 1.5mb down and 768k up. With all of our internet heavy traffic such as IP cameras and so on this connection is pretty much useless. We’ve resorted to using cellular for all internet with T-Mobile being primary and Verizon being secondary. Our gas station uses Mako Networks for all of its actual routing for POS systems, card processing, store computers, etc.
The setup looks like this:
PepLink BR1 Primary (T-Mobile)
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| PepLinkBR1 Secondary (Verizon)
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| Mako Cellular Failover (Carrier varies)
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Mako 6600
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Card Processing, POS, Store, Pumps, etc
The Primary BR1 acts as the “internet router” for the Mako device. It has its own cellular connection as well as the Secondary BR1’s cellular connection connected to the Primary BR1 via ethernet. The Primary BR1 is configured with both connections as Priority 1 thus balancing the traffic between the two connections.
Here’s where I’d like to improve:
First, my primary concern is card processing. When the connection to the processor drops it can sometimes take a bit of that to re-establish and as a busy 24-hour establishment that means cards stop working and things come to a screeching halt.
With the load balanced connection, the card processor will connect to either of the cellular connections and as long as that connection is solid everything is good to go. If that connection drops then it will switch to the other but sometimes not very smoothly. If both fail then the Mako device will failover to its own cellular connection (that takes even longer and usually results in even more downtime until things stabilize).
I’m exploring possibly utilizing a SpeedFusion Cloud setup to bond the two cellular connections specifically for card processing. I’m also exploring adding a 3rd cellular connection for balancing and redundancy (probably AT&T or a multi-carrier SIM). With all that I’m also exploring adding another device to handle the connections and SFC and use the BR1s more as standalone modems. I see there are a lot of devices that fit this bill, I’d be curious to see what you recommend. Also, note that when I bought the first BR1 on Amazon I was really just looking for a good modem option in a hurry and didn’t realize it was meant for automotive applications. I may eventually move those to actual automotive installations and replace them with standalone PepLink 5G modems.
What hardware would you recommend and how would you recommend we set it up.
Thanks,
Phil