I’m trying to find which is the best product for my application, it’s quite simple, so hopefully a quick answer
What i need is a router that has multiple 4G, a WAN (or 2) and ideally wireless. The router would need to create uninterruptible internet, so if the WAN dies, the 4G takes over, but with zero interruption.
The user case, is that these doesn’t need to be installed in a vehicle, or be partially rugged, as it’ll be flightcased… that said, if the only solution is a rugged one, that’s fine!
I work in the events industry, so with the rise virtual events, we often have to do off site streams, with multiple Teams/Zoom calls coming in and out, this means that if the internet dies, i can’t really have a glitch that drops all the calls or the stream, while the new service kicks in, it needs to be seamless.
I get the impression, that a lot of the routers sound like they do this, I just wanted so advice before i go spending the money!
I’d probably look at something like the Balance 20X or Max Transit Duo.
We use both under the context you describe and have had good results with them.
20X Has 1 onboard 4G modem and you can add a second via a module, it has one built in ethernet WAN and you can also bring a second in via the USB port if necessary.
The TST Duo has 2 built in 4G modems and one ethernet wan but is a smaller physical package.
Price wise they are pretty similar if you add the extra 4G module to the 20X.
Both have similar performance when it comes to bonding capacity, the built in 4G modem in the 20X is only a CAT4 though, whereas in the TST Duo you can have both as a CAT12.
Both can be ordered with Primecare which gives you the licences to use all of the wan smoothing / fec etc. for the SpeedFusion bonding if you are using a FusionHub solo to terminate the traffic for the bonding.
For the bonding side you could either host your own FusionHub in a cloud provider (plenty of guides on here about how to do that in Vultr, DigitalOcean etc). We host our own in our own environment. There is also the SpeedFusion Cloud service where you can buy a subscription from Pepwave to host the bonding service and I’m sure there are plenty of partners out there who could also provide “FusionHub as a service”.
Transit Duo CAT12 is the one you want for this. I am currently supporting 5 media companies globally with around 50 Duos deployed and they are all working out very well.
Different activities- some are live sports events, some are streaming weddings and funerals, others are doing virtual exhibitions. Speedfusion bonding back to either cloud hosted fusionhub or physical appliances (like the B310x) depending on where the encoding and mixing is happening is the norm.
Big thing to loo at is data and SIMs - keep that in mind. Multiple providers and loads of bandwidth si what you want.
Thanks for the advice, I think the router bit is sorted now from what’s been said. I now need to understand about the fusionhub element and how that to get that cloud hosted.
i assume if I wanted to achieve my “uninterrupted internet” feed, i would need to Speedfusion and have it sent to a cloud hosted fusionhub (this is rather than back to our office!). As i have no idea how to achieve this at the moment, a bit more research is needed.
To get going quickly running the FH in a cloud provider is probably easiest, a physical hub in the form of a Balance can also be used but obviously has an extra cost for the hardware there vs running a FusionHub virtual machine somewhere.
Here is an example though of getting the FusionHub deployed on Digital Ocean:
Hosting the hub yourself in your office may be viable, if you have a good enough internet connection to support the required bandwidth in and out and also are happy with whatever level of redundancy you’d have too.
You could also do both, depending on your requirements as @MartinLangmaid mentioned you may have equipment in a central studio / MCR etc. that you want to access via the PepVPN, but perhaps send traffic to/from the Internet for services like Teams/Zoom/Skype etc. via a FH in the cloud where you may have more bandwidth available.
The Pep boxes are quite flexible in how you deploy them and how you route traffic in and out and via what path, it is just a matter of configuration.
