I think my landline provider is going to discontinue my wired service soon. While a search lists many websites with "evaluations", I don't know which are impartial and which are promote one brand or another. I'd also like a table of features, I'm not sure if everything I would want is automatic. what I think i want, but maybe ignorance means i should require something else, or one of these things is foolish --battery backup --want to connect 2 phones, a minimal old style just to always be there --my current cordless base station for which I have 7 more remotes working off the same base. --ability to connect to the hotspot from my mobile if/when the wired internet access fails. --or tethered from my mobile? is it possible to use tethering from my phone to replace the entire wired network at home? Sorry, I'm ignorant, and is there an auto switch to go between my wired internet router and my home switch to make the crossover automatic in both directions? A google search says only the router can switch between one WAN and another, but it seems to me some smart person could make a minimal switch with that capability, since my router belongs to the cable company and I doubt they would want to make a failover to somebody else's internet as a source. If they do, I'm sure they'd charge an extra $100 per month even if i never did it. Almost certainly more change than I would be ready to make, but is there an open source switch setup to which some smart person has added a heartbeat monitor on the primary wan and will swtich to a second if the primary is down for some interval? Looks like I'll probably have to be happy with manually switching, as in... --Comcast cable internet goes down and stays down. --unplug it from my primary switch --have a Linux computer with bridging software idling to a USB port (or second Ethernet port?) --enable tethering on my phone and connect it to the bridging computer I assume the bridging software handles dynamic IP addresses, or is that actually built into the tethering on the phone? Carey