On 2025-12-10 11:59, CAREY SCHUG via Talk wrote:

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

There are a number of ATAs on the market.
They start at about $50 and go up to stupid expensive.

I used a linksys/Cisco ATA for years but it started acting flaky.
I would have replaced it with the same model but for the fact that the current version on sale did not seem to support encrypted VIOP services.
I replaced it with a Grandstream HT-812 which supports 2 lines and would run encrypted.
It is working just fine with my 5 handset phone/voice-mail system that we have had for something like 10 years.

--battery backup

You will likely get the best bang for the buck by using a cheap UPS.

--want to connect 2 phones, a minimal old style just to always be there

The default seems to be 2 lines in ATAs I am sure there are some single line units out there.

--my current cordless base station for which I have 7 more remotes working off the same base.

My setup has 5 from an old phone/answering-machine.
Not sure about your system but ours will go away when the power dies so that may also need a UPS.

--ability to connect to the hotspot from my mobile if/when the wired internet access fails.

The cheapies are hard wired.

--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?

The short answer is that you can setup a complex failover.
I use to use Sophos firewalls and they had a way to setup alternate failover WAN links.
Now I use OpenWRT which likely can do the same thing but is not nearly as nicely put together as a product as the Sophos firewalls were.

On my phone systems I have a ring group setup where when my home phone is called my home phone rings, my cottage phone rings, and the VOIP client on my cell phone rings.
A number of times I have picked up a call to my home number from my cell phone while on the road.

Carey

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Alvin Starr                   ||   land:  (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc.                   ||   home:  (905)513-7688
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