I have been running a single internet connection over a cable provider (Spectrum NYC) and for the past few years it would fail once in a while, however now its at least once per day that it goes down. This is especially frustrating as I work from home a lot and so I get kicked off video calls and so forth whenever this happens. I got very frustrated and decided to test out Tmobile Home Internet which runs over 5G to see if its better as I get a 14 day trial. I am in the middle of New York City and so there are many 5G AP’s within 1000 feet of my location, so signal strength won’t be an issue. I have run some tests on my cell phone which is also using Tmobile and found the performance to be equal or better than Spectrum’s offering.
I have the HEX S which I “think” should support this, although admittedly I don’t know how to set it up. What I am looking to accomplish is connecting both ISP’s to the router AND running network monitoring on both connections for a few days so that I can truly compare the data and determine which is better. If the 5G connection struggles severely at times, which some have said it might, then I might just put up with the dropping but generally steady cable connection.
So my questions are:
How can I configure the router for DUAL WAN
How can I run a continuous test on both lines to really see which is better
It's possible. You can make as simple or robust as desired.
At the most basic level... if we assume you have default-ish configuration....
If you remove one of the port for your bridge (in Bridge > Ports)
Add a DHCP client on the removed port, uncheck "Use DNS"/"Use NTP", and on advanced tab set the "Default Route Distance" to 2.
Plug in the TMobile Home Gateway into that port, and you should get an address.
Then, on the DHCP client for ether1 (or whatever the Spectrum), set the "Check Gateway" on Advance tab option to "ping".
In Interface > Lists, add the TMobile port to the WAN interface list (similar to ether1)
This is most basic form of dual WAN, and will failover to T-Mobile if the Spectrum get unplugged or it cannot ping the remote gateway. The steps above only use one "check-gateway", and will only detect if you connection to Spectrum is down, but if issue is between Spectrum and the internet, it could still be detected as up. So, it does not cover all case, nor let you control/direct certain traffic out a certain WAN (you need to add Routing > Tables) to do that. And so likely want to apply some "special" routes in IP > Routes to test the actual internet is up by pinging Google DNS (or something on internet). Also, you likely want to set the T-Mobile gateway up to know it's going to a router (which avoid a double-NAT). But I'd try the above steps which let you unplug the first internet, and then test T-Mobile "manually".
If you want more help, I'd recommend posting your configuration by using export. And if you're not running 7.20.7 or some recent stable, likely should upgrade.
My guess is the flakiness could be problem in your building in the COAX. The signals can get split too many times, or other such things. You should be able to go to the cable modem at http://192.168.100.1, which should show signal levels which be indicator of a signal quality issue.
And on the cell in NYC, it going to be very different speeds at different times of day, so measure at ~5pm and ~5am if you want to get a sense of speed ranges. The one benefit of 5G is typically the upload speed actually be higher than DOCSIS (Spectrum), which typically has relatively slow upload.
And in upcoming RouterOS release, you could plugin an iPhone (or most androids already) which let you phone as "backup" internet, granted manually and your phone be tied up... But it's a cheap backup plan, than paying both Spectrum and TMobile. When the problem is Spectrum should not be going down daily. And that begs the question why use Verizon FiOS, since that's pretty good in NYC, and likely lower than having two services (now perhaps not in your building/house).