This post was updated on 4/21/2025 – See the button for an update.
As part of some IT Consulting I currently do for friends, family, and beyond, I manage a few networks belonging to Small Businesses. These networks power their Point of Sales systems, Internet Jukeboxes, Streaming TV service, and Guest Wi-Fi, just to name a few things. Recently, one of my clients experienced an Internet failure at their business… TWICE in one week, which left them unable to process Credit Cards and submit Orders via their Internet-based Point of Sales system. Now you might say, gee, that sounds like a perfect candidate for Cash. Sure is. Thankfully, the business had an ATM on site with cellular connectivity provided by the ATM vendor for cash withdrawal. For the Point of Sales, this means the Business would have to go back to using Paper-based Ordering and Receipts. Just means closing out the day is going to be a bit more manual, along with performing some manual accounting work that the Point of Sales would otherwise have to do for you. No matter what, this usually means lost sales for the day since customers don’t always carry cash, and they don’t want to eat the ATM fees.
In the IT world, this usually screams a case of: “Why didn’t you buy a backup Internet connection! Your Internet connection is an insurance policy!” This is usually something that isn’t considered until the impacts of an Internet outage are felt. When the second outage hit, that is what my Client decided to do. Their Internet provider for their business, Spectrum Business, ended up being the provider they went through for the backup.
Spectrum’s Business LTE backup solution is a bit interesting. Per their Marketing pages, this is a $20/m add-on to the existing Business Internet account which will allow for up to four devices to be backed up using LTE Internet. This limit in a sense seems arbitrary, based on the number of Ethernet ports available via the supplied LTE gateway. These “four” devices could be for Point of Sales hardware or an Alarm system, or a computer which is needed to conduct business. Speeds provided are 10Mbps down, 10Mbps up. Per talks with a technician who came to install the backup service at my client’s location, the service can make use of either Verizon or AT&T as the wireless network, and that is determined based on coverage (and per my assumption, whoever provides Spectrum with a better rate). The hardware supplied to my client is a Cradlepoint E100-C7C Modem/Router combination device, which is managed by Spectrum. The device also includes battery backup which should keep the Cradlepoint powered for up to 8 hours. (Side note: Spectrum seems to put batteries in these as well as their Business cable modems, interestingly, even though cable nodes in my area don’t work when the power is out. LTE will, assuming the client devices are powered).
The Install Experience was a bit rocky
This wasn’t the fault of the technician who arrived, but a result of the fact that my client’s network was offline for several hours already, due to Spectrum having a node issue in the neighborhood. This issue took out Internet, TV, and Phone service for the entire block. I stopped by the business, and used a USB to Ethernet adapter connected to my Android phone to bring the business back online for Internet. The existing router I installed, a UniFi Dream Wall, supports Dual WAN out of the box, and this was pretty easy to accomplish; if Spectrum came back online while my phone was providing Internet to the business, the router would simply switch to Spectrum, with my phone’s USB Ethernet tethering being set up as WAN2.
The Technician installing the service indicated that the LTE Modem required a connection back to Spectrum’s network, in order to activate. Not having Internet meant the installation and setup could not continue. This is a bit contrary to how I am typically used to activating cellular modems, where you provide the IMEI and ICCID (SIM ID, or EID if the device uses eSIM) of the cellular modem you are trying to activate to the carrier or backend system handling the provisioning, apply a service profile (plan), reboot the modem, and off you go. The technician proceeded with installing the hardware and antenna, although they also spent a good portion of the time on the phone, checking with engineers in the company to see whether the Cradlepoint LTE Backup could be activated without Internet, and whether other avenues were available, including an ETA for resolving the outage. The end result of the call left the tech disappointed, and stuck with the possibility of having to re-schedule the service call. This of course, punishes Spectrum’s techs on their metrics as it would classify as a repeat call.
We ended up bending the activation process a bit. As it turns out, a connection to Spectrum’s network is NOT needed to activate the Cradlepoint LTE backup. For the love of your customers Spectrum, DO NOT “FIX” THIS! Instead, equip your technicians with this solution. What we ended up doing was attaching the Cradlepoint’s WAN connection up to any LAN port on the UniFi Router, which provided the Cradlepoint with an Internet connection it needed (via my cell phone’s data connection) to reach out to Spectrum’s central management, activate, download a firmware upgrade, and provision. We could have also attached the Cradlepoint’s WAN connection directly to my cell phone’s USB to Ethernet adapter, but I didn’t want to knock the business offline again. After a five minute wait, the Cradlepoint rebooted, showed an LTE connection, and appeared to be ready. Disconnecting the Cradlepoint router from the UniFi network showed a 10Mbps/10Mbps Internet connection supplied via AT&T. Great!
About 15 minutes after the LTE backup was brought online and the business was switched over to that instead of via my phone’s tethering, Spectrum resolved the issue with their Cable node, and all was back up and running as it should. The Cradlepoint also switched the connection back to Spectrum Cable automatically.
The Drawbacks
I noticed there were a few drawbacks with the solution provided by Spectrum, and this seems to be a product of their ecosystem design choices. Their existing routers such as the SAX1V1K, which are being supplied to Businesses, do not have Dual WAN functionality in them. In fact, these routers are only able to be managed through a clunky web app interface and don’t provide many settings at all to optimize their performance and security, not even a local web interface, so I would recommend giving the router back to Spectrum and using a proper Small Business router (like a Ubiquiti Dream Machine). In fact, the supplied Cradlepoint router for the LTE backup is much more “business grade” than the stock hardware they supply. Although you are not given Web Interface access to it.
First of all: If you have a Static IP address, you’ll need the Spectrum-provided router to begin with. When your main Internet connection is out, your Static IP won’t be able to route over the LTE backup connection. This is because the IP provided by Spectrum, is not able to be announced over someone else’s (not Spectrum’s) network, such as AT&T or Verizon. Spectrum requires their router, as instead of using Static routes at the network level, they use RIPv2 to announce your IP space out of the modem/router they supply to you. This means the LTE Connection is strictly a backup for critical outbound workloads, not as something that will act as a purely redundant Internet connection. With Static IP, your equipment will be hooked up in this fashion: Cable Modem –> Spectrum router (if not combined) with any device needing a Static IP –> LTE Backup –> Anything which must be behind the LTE Backup. In theory, and possibly with Enterprise Fiber, they would configure the Cradlepoint to handle the handoff of Static IPs or to use one of the Static IPs on its WAN, but that could get messy if we are talking about the former. On Dynamic IP accounts, the Cradlepoint could theoretically live behind any router with backed up devices connected to the Cradlepoint, but I don’t know how much Spectrum would appreciate that.
Second: If you rely on direct access to devices with LTE Backup, don’t count on it. On the WAN side, the LTE connection is using Carrier NAT, which is typical of many cellular connections. On the LAN side, the Cradlepoint device operates in Router/NAT mode, so any device behind it will be behind a NAT. Possibly Double NAT depending on how the install is done. Because the Cradlepoint is managed by Spectrum, it is not possible (to my knowledge) to Port Forward or DMZ a device or two. Spectrum does not operate the Cradlepoint in Bridge/Passthrough mode, as this would break their ability to manage it. Therefore, if the Cradlepoint sits on your LAN as a device, and you have devices connected to the Cradlepoint for backup, connectivity to those backed up devices over the LAN will not be possible, directly (although there are ways to fix this with software).
Third: If the Cradlepoint is your Dual WAN Router, you lose IPv6 support on the Cable network. This only applies to Dynamic IP accounts because Static IP accounts do not have IPv6 support to begin with (again, using RIPv2, and there’s no RIPng or BGP, or static routing…) even if you do manage to get something. If you use IPv6 for reasons such as software development, for better privacy on the Internet, for L3 redundancy (yes, this is a thing since many major services are dual stack and ISPs can have IPv4 DHCP failure), to avoid issues caused by NAT, or if you just want to be on the bleeding edge, this isn’t going to happen anymore. So long as your devices are connected from behind the Cradlepoint.
Fourth: The Cradlepoint model being deployed is not able to fully utilize what Gigabit service provides. The service is provisioned to 1.1Gbps down, and either 35Mbps, 940Mbps, or 1.1Gbps up depending on your area’s infrastructure. The Cradlepoint comes with a 1Gbps Ethernet Ethernet port, and is rated for 850Mbps of Firewalled (which often means NAT) throughput. This isn’t a problem if you’re on a speed tier lower than Gigabit. At Gigabit, this means a reduction of 80-100Mbps if we do not consider margin of error. In my own testing, I have seen the Cradlepoint able to route at a full 940Mbps, but not consistently – often landing more around 810-840Mbps. 1.1Gbps (connected directly to the modem) is no longer possible due to hardware limitations.
Fifth: The equipment is not 5G capable. The major carriers, Verizon and AT&T, are focusing on 5G deployments now. All new network capacity is 5G. LTE is even in the process of getting capacity taken away from it. I have observed this with Verizon shifting LTE Band 5 (850Mhz) into Standalone 5G n5, which means 4G phones no longer have access to Band 5 capacity. Bands 66 and 2 have also been seen shifting to 5G using Dynamic Spectrum sharing, but the long term plan is to move that capacity to Standalone 5G. Band 48, CBRS, is slated to also move to 5G at some point, but the last I checked that was still in testing. What this means is, the LTE backup over time may not even provide 10Mbps down, 10Mbps up, or consistent, reliable connectivity due to congestion. Congestion has been growing in my area, and 5G is the only thing providing consistent service where it is available. In many of the major shopping centers, I am often unable to connect to LTE Data to send a message out due to congestion unless the 5G connects. AT&T is not much better in this area, and has less spectrum than Verizon.
Closing thoughts
At the end of the day, my client is happy with the LTE Backup service, although it hasn’t been needed since the past two extended outages. Spectrum is typically reliable in their area, being in a major shopping/commercial center, near a university, and in a sizable city. The service is inexpensive enough, so it is a pretty easy sell.
From a technical implementation perspective, I am not too pleased. If Spectrum had a proper business grade router from the get go to give to business customers, they could simply slot in an add-on modem, or provide a simple Ethernet handoff so their router, or a customer’s own router, could use the backup via a WAN2. This would mean one less router in the mix, and less complexity for Static and Dynamic IP customers, since the “four devices” thing means customers have to choose what to connect up – and that might be their own router (triple NAT time?). The speeds are sufficiently fast enough to handle critical loads like Point of Sales, Back office work, and a little bit of multimedia. Since Spectrum is also an MVNO of Verizon, it wouldn’t be too difficult for them to offer a “30GB/m high speed backup, slower speeds thereafter” backup plan with the responsibility left on the customer to configure their equipment properly, or suffer slowdowns. This would even leave the option of using their own cellular modem with a supplied SIM Card. Of course, leaving a turn-key solution available for customers who can’t or won’t do this. All while maintaining combined billing.
I am under the impression that unplugging the WAN connection from the Cradlepoint and sticking it in a proper Dual WAN router situation would notify Spectrum, and trigger an automatic tech dispatch if the Cradlepoint was left on cellular for too long. This seems like the wrong way to supply a backup connection.
EDIT: An Update – 4/21/2025
The business where the LTE backup service is installed called me earlier this week when their Spectrum TV and Internet Services went down, due to a neighborhood outage. They were reporting issues with their credit card transactions. Although I could access the router I installed for them remotely, web traffic was getting sinkholed except for a brief 20 second window. Pings were going out reliably.
Turns out… the Cradlepoint got a bit cranky, and it needed a reboot. It had been powered up for far too long to the point where the software on it bugged out during the failover. After a reboot, the backup was working fine, and switched back over to the cable modem once services were restored. I noticed the backup connection’s network at some point from the initial creation of this post, switched from AT&T to Verizon. The 10Mbps bandwidth limit was also becoming a problem following the reboot, because alongside credit card transactions, the business still needed to check e-mails, be in video calls (one or two people doing this tops), and because it is a Sports Bar/Restaurant, used the connection to stream TV temporarily for the customers. It became much too slow, and all of this is considered “business critical” traffic for a small business. Customers do get unhappy if the cable goes out for hours during a big game. Meetings not being possible delay business decisions.
This brings me back to my conclusion about the current Cradlepoint connection method being less than ideal. During the outage, I called Spectrum to inquire about whether disconnecting the Cradlepoint from the WAN connection, and having the cellular portion be enabled 24/7 as a secondary WAN on a dual WAN Router for failover-only (meaning emergency data usage only) would be against the Terms of Service. Spectrum confirmed this would be the case, and the LTE backup would be shut off as a result if I did this.
The headache my customer experienced is an avoidable problem… if the cellular link is active all the time and can be monitored. A backup isn’t dependable unless it is routinely checked, and this means ensuring it is not only stable while it is not needed, but also ensuring that the connection is able to pass traffic correctly at random. Many Dual WAN routers I configure have a watchdog available which can perform a battery of tests against a backup connection, and alert me if something goes wrong, without having to turn off connectivity via the main connection. For example, they can perform gateway and site ping checks, basic HTTP connectivity checks, monitor for physical link issues, and alert of any of these fail. Policy Based Routing and a monitoring host on the LAN can also accomplish much of the same results.
So with that said, I’ll stand by what I said, and change my opinion of this service to a “Don’t buy.” Spectrum needs to allow the backup connection to operate as an always-on, secondary WAN link so a business serious about staying online can monitor the backup, and be proactive (reboot the modem) when it breaks. I will likely be going with my client to a Verizon store to pick up one of their 5G cellular modems instead, and cancel the Spectrum LTE Backup service. There are just too many drawbacks that we are finding for business grade service. I have a Verizon 5G modem deployed at another location for the same client, and it has worked seamlessly when their primary connection has dropped out. Not to mention, it’s much faster. In the same period, the Verizon gateway, which is in IP Passthrough mode by the way, has never needed a reset, and there isn’t a double/triple NAT situation happening when on the failover.
