How To Set Up A Backup (Cellular) Home Internet Connection In Israel

For when your sapak just isn’t really all that great and fiber is nowhere to be seen

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has written a how-to explaining the various methodologies one could use to provision backup internet in Israel. At least in English (I’m lazy and haven’t plumbed the depths of Hebrew Google yet).

Setting up backup connectivity on a TP-Link cellular router purchased in Ivory Computers. Screenshot: Author.

This may not be the most exciting topic in the world, I realize. Sometimes, when I share the odd technical how-to I write with friends, I get back the kind of comments and looks you might receive after trying to explain the nuances of quantum physics.

But really:

a) It’s not that complicated.

b) It’s seriously useful. Unreliable home internet connectivity has really hampered my work-from-home business over the past year and figuring out a solution has thus been sort of a mild breakthrough of sorts.

In simple language: if your home internet connection isn’t reliable and you’ve concluded that you have no other solutions (for instance, there’s no fiber optic in your area and Hot/Bezeq is just as bad) then one last thing worth trying is setting up a 4G router.

This will be slightly more expensive and complicated than just running a hotspot from your phone when you need a backup. But if you really depend upon the internet this solution will be much more robust and professional. And the beauty is that the failover (automatic switching to 4G when the main line goes down) will happen automatically.

So without further a-do, here are a couple of options. At least at the time of writing.

Buy A Data SIM And Set Up A 4G Router That Uses Your Sapak Connection

Here are the instructions:

1. Firstly, buy a data only SIM card. In Hebrew, you’ll find these described as כרטיס סים לגלישה בלבד. I found options from both Pelephone and we4G. Data only SIMs are basically SIM packages that only provide data and strip out all the other things that phone companies usually provide in their connection packages. This allows phone companies to provide affordable connectivity plans.
2. Next, purchase a 4G/cellular router that has at least two RJ45 (ethernet) ports. Right now, there are a couple of 5G routers on the market but they’re waaay more expensive than 4G. So I recommend sticking to 4G as it should be good enough for backup connectivity that you only need now and again. In a couple of years 5G routers will likely be a lot cheaper. But don’t just buy any router. Look for one with RJ45 / networking ports. This is because we’re going to be wiring our sapak router into this. I went for the TP-Link TL-MR100 which I picked up from Ivory. In retrospect, I should have gone for something a littl

ראוטרים (נתב) ראוטר סלולרי

3. You’ll need to first make sure that you can get your SIM card into the router and set it up. I had to configure the correct APN in order to get mine running.

4. Once that has been set up, you’ll want to do some wiring. Basically you’re connecting your sapak router into your new TL-Link router so that your sapak router’s only purpose is to pass along internet into the other router that will do the actual networking for your home. To do this, run ethernet cabling between a LAN port on your sapak router and into whichever port is labelled WAN (or LAN/WAN) on your cellular router. If you need more than one ethernet switch from the cellular router, you can simply buy an ethernet switch — or a few of them.

5. You’ll likely also need to make a few configuration changes so that your new cellular router knows that its job is to only use the 4G connectivity as a backup in case the primary connection (from your sapark) fails. I went through how to do all this on the TP-Link router that I purchased here.

6. Finally, I would recommend taking down any WiFi networks you might have been running from your sapak and initiating the one that your TP-Link cellular router should be able to provide. This can be done via the router’s admin page. Typically the login IP is written on the back of the “box” alongside some default login credentials. You may also need to change the default IP address of the cellular router so that it doesn’t “collide” with that of your cellular router. I covered how to do this in the video above.

Your Other Option: Subscribe To Both Hot And Bezeq And Use A Dual WAN Router (Or A Load Balancing Router) To Manage The Connections

The setup during the testing phase. The first LAN port runs into a switch for networking the rest of the apartment. Photo: author.

It’s also possible to subscribe simultaneously to two internet connections, each one using a different tashtit (Hot and Bezeq).

I did this for a few months but found that the Hot and Bezeq lines tended to suffer downtime at roughly the same time — which therefore negated the point of using one as a failover connection.

To do this you could:

a) Sing up for lines based on Bezeq and Hot infrastructure. It makes sense to do this with the same company if possible. I found that Partner was able to take care of this request no problem and for a while I was simply paying for two subscription lines on the same bill and had two Partner routers at home.

b) Then, you can purchase a dual WAN router that will be able to take in two different connections and manage the failover. Like in the above example, it would make sense to take down any WiFi networks that are running on the ISP routers and just leave the one running from the end router up.

Dual WAN (and above) devices are typically intended for the networking uses of small businesses and other environments that really depend upon backup connectivity. So this option works out to be a little more expensive from a hardware expensive.

You can use both a load balancing router and a conventional router by the way. You’ll just probably want to set your second router up in access point (AP) mode to avoid annoying conflicts between the too. Many TP-Link routers (sold in KSP and Ivory) can do this out of the box. But check the spec first to be sure.

Something like the TP-Link R480T+ would do the trick for most home networking setups and is actually a really good deal.

A more elaborate option:

Options 1 and 2 Diagrammed

How Much Does This Cost?

Here were my costs.

Couldn’t You Just Use A Hotspot?

Yes.

But why is this much better?

• Failover from ISP to cellular will happen automatically. And vice versa.
• A hotspot can’t be used to network ethernet (wired) devices. Every device on your network can be wired into your cellular router.
• The cellular router can even be powered off a USP so that it stays powered on even when power fails. It’s also always there and won’t run out of batter.

You could also:

Provision several cellular modems as described above and bond to aggregate bandwidth into something approaching or exceeding your average ISP line, especially in areas unserved by traditional home connectivity:

Cellular Infrastructure Networks In Israel — Frequencies And Providers

Useful Terms

Failover — Automatically swapping to a network interface that’s down when another is up.

Connection bonding- A little bit different. Joining up different internet connections to present one virtual connection to appliances. To bond multiple internet connections (WANs) you need a hardware appliance on the other side of the network. Speedify is a good consumer solution. OpenMPTCprouter is a good open source (FOSS) implementation.