Back up internet for home

Wozzer100uk · 5 Jul 2025 at 19:20

Hi,

I need some advise/ suggestions on a back up internet connection for my home or camera's/ motion sensors that do not use wifi. Currently, I'm with Virgin and use eero's around my home. We have Tapo camera's and motion sensors as we care for mum who has Alzheimer's and we need to be able to monitor her and get notifications if she gets out of bed. Yesterday Virgin went down for the day and night, leaving us with no way to monitor mum. So I need to get a back up internet or camera's and motion sensors that do not need wifi. My thought was to use the eero back up internet feature but it costs £10.50 a month, also I will need to get a 4g router and a data sim for it at around £10 a month. My other issue is that the signal indoors is pretty bad and when I tested the eero today using the back up hotspot to my phone, it wasnt great and kept losing connection. Considering, it may not actually get used, it seems a lot to pay. Any suggestion on a better back up internet or camera's and motion sensors i can use on my phone that do not use wifi?

Any help would be appreciated.

radderfire · 5 Jul 2025 at 19:25

Just to clarify, Mum is in the same house as you?

Wozzer100uk · 5 Jul 2025 at 19:36

Hi Radderfire, Yes she is

Avalon · 5 Jul 2025 at 21:35

If you are balking at £20/m, what are you expecting to pay?

Lets deal with the obvious, Eero are extracting the urine and no reasonable person pays £10.50/m for a feature that should be free and is on pretty much any other router that supports it. However, you are still going to need to pay for an alternative connection and a router that isn’t a joke. If you are eligible, you have the option of social tariffs which are around £15/m, if not, its going to be over £20/m+ or a 4G/5G router in bridge mode and a data SIM which likely looks like £10-15/m on top and you need to work out which network provider gives you the best signal.

Either way, its unlikely you are getting out of this without paying for new hardware/a tenner monthly bare minimum.

Wozzer100uk · 5 Jul 2025 at 21:47

Hey Avalon, the cost isn't really my issue. You are right that paying for a feature that should be free is not great. After using it today it just seems not the best. I'm not very technical with internet stuff and my mistake, never thought about back up internet when I bought the eero's, which I have 3 of. If there is a better mesh system that I can upgrade too that means I don't have to pay eero I would be happy to upgrade but I don't know which are best. To be honest, I only want it for the cameras and sensors and wondered if there are cameras that don't need internet.. cheers for your advice.

Avalon · 5 Jul 2025 at 21:51

Put the Eero in mesh mode and add a router that isn’t paywallimg basic features?

radderfire · 5 Jul 2025 at 22:05

Wozzer100uk said:
Any suggestion on a better back up internet or camera's and motion sensors i can use on my phone that do not use wifi?

There are going to be wired analog CCTV systems that don't need internet. I think Swann and Hikvision are brands that make them. I guess a standard webcam would also be an option.

I'm thinking if you used a wired PoE setup, then this would not necessarily need internet to work, the networking bit would work by itself, but I'm not 100% on this.

The hard part would be getting a notification to work.

Avalon · 5 Jul 2025 at 22:32

radderfire said:
There are going to be wired analog CCTV systems that don't need internet. I think Swann and Hikvision are brands that make them. I guess a standard webcam would also be an option.

I'm thinking if you used a wired PoE setup, then this would not necessarily need internet to work, the networking bit would work by itself, but I'm not 100% on this.

The hard part would be getting a notification to work.

If you don’t know what you are talking about (analogue CCTV only?!) why are you posting.

Networking 101. WAN has absolutely nothing to do with local services running, CCTV will work, be it IP based or analogue, PoE or wifi, the only exception is cloud based services because obviously no WAN. Anything local that doesn't require the internet will work, but you will either be running a local NVR or a camera that has local storage and does basic NVR locally.

Example: My WAN was down at another property die to a fallen tree, all I lost was remote push notifications, because they go via WAN.

Unfortunately in this case, op needs notifications, which is why they need some form of WAN if away from home, which is what was being discussed.

Nice to see you’ve stopped using ChatGPT though

radderfire · 5 Jul 2025 at 22:53

To the OP ... I think you should be able to have WiFi cameras in operation on your local network without needing the internet service active, i.e. local networking is operational standalone it does not need internet. You would need any notifications routed via local networking as well and this may be possible via your existing system, but I wouldn't know the technicalities for your exact setup. However, you should be thinking along these lines.

AtaRo · 6 Jul 2025 at 00:30

I got a Tplink Tapo camera and it does not work without an internet connection, streaming is limited to about 5 minutes and some of the features is behind a paywall/subscription so local streaming do not work with tapo camera if internet is down.