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I am a business owner with multiple BT Buisness Broadband lines. We have two sets of VOIP lines and two sets of PC's, each with there own switch board.

The problem that we have is that our lines go down frequently and we want to create a simple solution for both managing the internet routing and for monitoring the internet connections.

My idea is to use a PC in the cabinet to control a managed switch which in turn routes the internet connections.

My questions are; is this setup possible? and is there a better way?

Below is our current setup and our new setup idea:

enter image description here

My secondary goal is to monitor the four internet connections from the 'Cabinet PC'. I want to record the internet download/upload speeds and the date, time, and length of any downtime. Is this possible?

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  • Are these four locations physically separate (not different floors in the same building, but different buildings in separate cities for example)? It would be possible to use a router or a firewall with routing capabilities to utilise all 4 uplinks, but it'll require routing and some sort of failover mechanic.
    – Stuggi
    Sep 20 '16 at 14:23
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    With enterprise-grade equipment, you can automatically switch to available hubs if one should go down, and you can monitor your traffic performance. The specific details depend on the physical locations, wiring, bandwidth, etc, as @Stuggi asks.
    – Ron Trunk
    Sep 20 '16 at 14:45
  • The Hubs and Switches are all stacked within a single cabinet. The PCs/VOIP Phones/Printers are wired to the switches from two adjoining cabins.
    – SanSalvage
    Sep 20 '16 at 14:52
  • Did any answer help you? if so, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer. Alternatively, you could post and accept your own answer.
    – Ron Maupin ♦
    Jan 3 '21 at 19:51
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Load balancing across the 4 BT-hubs can't easily be done from a switch, as Stuggi says, You will need an internal router and the managed switch should have all gigabit capable ports. (I'm guessing you have BT Infinity circuits for VoIP)

There are routers that can load balance 4 WAN lines with a single LAN link to the central managed switch in your drawing. The central switch should also be able to provide VLAN management & basic routing so that only traffic destined for the internet reaches the load balancer. You will end up with a point to point routed connection from the load balancer to each of the five connected devices.

You are essentially amalgamating four small independent LANs into one, so you will also need to address these items before you start; Planning the IP addressing across the whole network & replacing the DHCP provided by the BT hubs with a single source. if the VoIP call quality starts to suffer with all devices on one LAN, you may have to move VoIP into a dedicated VLAN, possibly with QoS enabled.

The internet monitoring features you want will require the BT hubs to send all events to a central log server database which can then be accessed via network management software. This software will have to be configured to interpret the messages that the hubs create.

Finally, 'Managed switch' is very much in the 'you get what you pay for' category.

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  • Product and/or resource recommendations are explicitly off-topic here, as is equipment for which the vendor does not offer optional, paid support.
    – Ron Maupin ♦
    Sep 21 '16 at 0:02

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