Hello, long time lurker first time poster. I know this post is similar to the Network Cat5 A/B switch controlled over HTTP
but this did not give any information about this topic other than the 8 channel relay would not work.
What I'm trying to do: I'd like to make the standard physical RJ-45 A/B switch but allow it to switch from A to B remotely instead of manually switching. The physical one looks like this:
There are many applications for this. Mainly I'd like to be able to switch networks remotely with the RJ-45 A/B switch located at a data-center. Yes, I understand there are $5000 router solutions and even $500 predesigned remote A/B switch solutions. I'm looking for a $50-100 solution. I also could pay $100 everytime I needed to do this by paying for remote hands at the datacenter, but would rather not do this as this is possible.
He does not go into detail other than say he's using an arduino microcontroller with an ethernet shield, and he is using relays. This youtuber can't be contacted.
The question is what relays would work for this application? The relay mentioned in the 2016 forum (photo below) sounded like this was be a very inefficient and a bad solution.
I’m trying to think of a reason for this - other than physical network isolation.
A $100+ router can achieve this, or a Layer-3 switch,
Faster, more reliable, and transparent to the network.
You might get away with relays assuming short cable runs. You will certainly shorten the cable length at which point the connection will stop working, but it might be ok if the cables are short. Only way to know is to try.
That said clearly there are ICs for routing ethernet data, have you investigated what is available?
Again, I understand there are better solutions, but I'm looking for the poor man's way. If you have 2 routers one main and one backup, a $100 router will not switch over to the backup router if the main router loses power. Yes, you can use VRRP. Yes, you can use CARP with pfsense. You can use digital chassis with Cisco routers. These are not cheap solutions.
I was thinking that as switches and other equipment are built around IC based switching devices such devices must be available. I have not investigated what is available, but if I were doing what you are doing I'd be investigating what is available, reading data sheets and trying to find something that will do what I want.
If you are looking for some kind of fail over switching be careful of making your equipment more unreliable by adding your switching device and thus making the situation worse not better.
Any consumer router with multiple WAN ports should sort your problem.
I’ve been using Unifi for a decade, and failover routing it certainly a possibility.
You can configure multiple scenarios to invoke a path change, but the simplest as you say, is if the primary port disconnects.
To go the extra mile, LCR (Least Cost Routing), or Spanning Tree will look for the ‘best route to the next hop/hops.
Yes, I've used physical A/B switches for years without any issues. I have used them to switch from my whole house VPN to the network without a VPN so netflix will play, but I have to go down to the basement and manually switch them over.
Yes, I have used Ubiquiti/Unifi with VRRP. It's complex to setup. You just have to pray it works when your router dies. Also, my datacenter requires that VRRP has the backup on a separate IP address, so when your router goes down, all your websites now have a new IP address. I have a DNS failover to detect when it's down to swap over to the new IP address. CARP with pfsense is much better which does not require a separate IP address, but the datacenter has to help set it up and will charge you for this.
You can spend 3 weeks trying to get this all to work and pray it works right when the router goes down OR you just flip the switch and everything works on the backup router. There is value to doing this or no one would sell A/B switches.
That is good to know, because my possible solution is to remove the detent mechanism so the switch rotates smoothly. Add a lever to the switch shaft. Connect a solenoid to the lever arm and power the solenoid to move the arm/switch to the new position.
Add a second solenoid to the arm to move the switch back to the first position. Possible add microswitches to provide feedback when the switch has completed movement.
So, one pulse to rotate the switch and one pulse to rotate it back.
That's a good idea. I can look into this. The issue I'm thinking of is with solenoids typically are 12V so would need a separate power supply than the arduino 5V.
