Fritz 7490 failover from Cable to 4G?

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kenkeniff

628 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 88

#270107 23-Apr-2020 15:46

The FRITZ!Box 7490 is ubiquitous in NZ but so frustratingly falls only slightly short of being a really great router...

For me particularly on two just points;

That it will only act as a repeater or wireless bridge for other Fritz devices - preventing it from being used as a general repeater.
It only has the option to failover to 3G/4G from DSL, not from LAN 1 (UFB, Ethernet WAN etc) - so currently I have to login to router to manually enable mobile if cable WAN goes out (which is does fairly regularly as my cable is fed from a PtP link).

In relation to #2 I'm wondering if anyone has any workarounds?

I'm thinking even some script that could operate client-side to ping an IP and if it fails for say 60 sec then it toggles the Fritz to Mobile mode (maybe via the API or UI macro) for say 30 min then switches back again (to re-check).

NumPy

132 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 60
Inactive user

#2468785 23-Apr-2020 16:58

To be honest I never even knew my Fritzbox took a SIM Card.

kenkeniff

628 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 88

#2468798 23-Apr-2020 17:12

NumPy:

To be honest I never even knew my Fritzbox took a SIM Card.

I'm using Huawei E3372h-607 4G USB Dongle however it supports others apparently along with USB "tethering" from mobile phones.

boosacnoodle

1269 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 855

#2468803 23-Apr-2020 17:19

The failover is really quite odd, isn't it? I suppose with DSL you can easily tell if the line is down as opposed to fibre where this may not be so clear, i.e. the ethernet link to the ONT is still active, even though you get no data transfer. Technically if you are using PPPoE it should be fairly easy to tell but alas we're in the situation that we're in. I haven't found a way to work around this unfortunately.

NumPy:

To be honest I never even knew my Fritzbox took a SIM Card.

It doesn't. You can plug a USB modem in, however.

kenkeniff

628 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 88

#2468815 23-Apr-2020 17:49

I have another spare Fritz and switch so I experimented running the second Fritz(2) from the 4G dongle then connecting a LAN port to the WAN of the first Fritz(1) via a switch along with the PtP WAN connection.

Then I set Fritz(2) with an IP in the range of my PtP WAN, disabled DHCP and gave Fritz(1) a static IP.

So effectively I had access to WAN1 (PtP Link) and WAN2 (4G via Fritz2) via the single WAN port of Fritz1 and could select between them by changing the gateway IP on Fritz1 to either of them; however that led me back to square 1 of still having to login into the router and manually changeover as again frustratingly Fritz doesn't support multiple gateways...

I guess another option would be to stick both WAN connections on the same LAN switch and use some external DHCP server which can manage gateway failover and reissue DHCP to clients.