Multiple routes in home LAN

Question

I can connect my switch to my router in 2 ways:

• Via a WiFi to Ethernet bridge. This is what I'm currently using.
• Via Powerline.

In both case, these involve a regular ethernet cable going from my switch to a "magic device".

Unfortunately, both go down from time to time, though the Powerline much more often. I was wondering, could I connect using both of them at the same time? So at least, when the WiFi bridge goes down, the Powerline can take over. And even better, combine their bandwidth? (The sum of which is, of course, still less than the uplink.) I've already tried connecting both without using any specific hardware, software or settings, but that just makes my switch always choose the inferior Powerline.

For bonus points: The WiFi connection suffers from latency fluctuation. It's usually at a good level, but can sometimes go 100+ ms. Would it be possible to detect when this happens and automatically switch to Powerline until the WiFi is back to normal? I suspect not, since these circumstances change pretty fast.

Of course the best solution would be to just lay a proper cable, but unfortunately that's not (easily) possible.

Answer 1

You probably cannot run two parallel load-balanced or failover connections with a consumer-grade router, but it is possible with something like the Edgerouter http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax. The Edgerouter lite is just under $100, and with two of them you could route the packets over WiFi, and then failover to Powerline when there were problems with WiFi.

This is usually used for multiple Internet connections, but it should be able to configure as noted here https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMAX-Configuration-Examples/EdgeMAX-Policy-based-routing-with-WAN-load-balancing/ta-p/521957 and here https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMAX-Configuration-Examples/EdgeMAX-Automatic-WAN-failover-with-PBR-load-balancing/ta-p/511289

The Edgerouter runs Vyatta, and more info is available in the first chapter of this: http://ftp.het.net/iso/vyatta/vc6.3/docs/Vyatta_HA_R6.3_v01.pdf

But while this is possible, it is probably a lot of work to set up, so I would seriously consider whether a simpler solution might meet your needs better.