T-Mobile 5G as second WAN
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Hi,
I’m currently using a Netgate 3100 with Xfinity for my now rock stable home network. T-Mobile’s new unlimited 5G for 50 bucks is pretty tempting as backup or load balanced additional WAN. My knowledge about networks is limited and not sure if it easily possible with the proprietary hardware or in general worth the effort.
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/public-files/attachments/T-Mobile%20High-Speed%20Internet%20Gateway%20End%20User%20Guide.pdf
Thanks for any reply and apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it.
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@converge You can have multiple WANs. See https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/multiwan/index.html
As to whether it's worth the effort, how often does your Xfinity go down in a year, and what is the impact? For a business one can rationalize $x per hour in downtime pretty quickly.
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Yeah, if you've got it in your budget, it looks good to me. The gateway box has a network port on it, so ideally your pfsense machine needs 3 ports - 2x WAN and LAN. Then, simply follow the directions on the link above to set it all up. This would work good for a failover situation, if your Xfinity service went down.
Like @SteveITS says, how many times does that happen for you?
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Thanks @steveits and @akuma1x. I think my question is more about connecting to those proprietary gateways. Do those require a firmware that allows some kind of bridge mode (you see my knowledge is indeed very limited)? Or either way, you simply connect to the Opt port and follow the pfsense manual?
Xfinity is usually fine, 1-2 major blackouts > 1 hour a year during working hours, at most. Occasionally slow, but mostly peace of mind I guess.
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@converge The capability is built into pfSense. There are varying ways to set it up, routing certain traffic over one or the other, or prioritizing one over the other. Budget/estimate yourself a few hours to go through it and decide if that is worth setting it all up. :)