How To Set Up A TP-Link 4G/LTE Router As A Backup Internet Router (Wireless Router Mode)
Channel: Daniel Rosehill
Date: 2021-08-28

If you're looking for a (relatively) straightforward way to achieve backup internet connectivity in your home of office, then you can use a TP-Link cellular router and run it in wireless router mode.

Using this mode (note: it's not the standard setting), you can connect your current ISP router into the WAN port of the device. The ISP connection will be your backup connectivity. And the router will manage the 4G/cellular connection as a backup to the main line (note: you'll need to change one more setting to configure the backup function in this manner). In the event that the primary connection goes down, the router will failover to the backup line and then return it once the interruption has resumed.

I looked at various ways for achieving backup ISP/cellular connectivity including looking at dual WAN routers and load balancing routers. Ultimately simply using the WAN port on the TP-Link device proved to be the simplest and most cost effective of the solutions that involved deploying the least hardware. This is a great solution for me for the moment and if I want to do something more elaborate (e.g. dual ISP + cellular) I have most of the hardware to make that happen. 

After setting the basic networking up, I rigged up an ethernet switch to the LAN port on the device and now have an ethernet and WiFi network running that have backup connectivity built into them.

The summary of settings changes that I made and went through in this video:

1: Changing the TP Link MR100 router mode from 3G/4G router to wireless router.
2: Applying the 3G/4G backup section so that the router knew to use the cellular connectivity as the backup and not primary connection source. 
3: Assigning a new IP address to the router's embedded web server (EWS) to prevent conflicts between the one belonging to the ISP router. 

By: Daniel Rosehill (danielrosehill.com):

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== Affiliate links to product(s) mentioned ===

TP-Link TL-MR100 300Mb Wireless N 4G LTE WiFi Router with SIM Slot

https://amzn.to/3BHlMib

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