Building a backup connection: what to do when the wifi drops

If your work depends on your connection, one route isn't enough. The question isn't whether it will fail, it's when, and the answer is usually the day of the presentation.

The layers, from most to least

1. The wifi at your accommodation or coworking space, as the main route.
2. Your own mobile data on the phone, shared with the laptop.
3. A second data plan on ANOTHER local network, for when the outage is the carrier's and not the building's.
4. And somewhere you know less than ten minutes away that has its own connection.

The third layer is the one almost nobody builds and the one that saves the odd days: when a whole national network goes down, having a plan on that same network is no help at all.

How to test it, and test it you must

An untested backup isn't a backup. The test is simple and belongs to your first day, not the day you need it.

• Turn the wifi off and make a five-minute video call over mobile data.
• Share the connection with the laptop and open whatever you work in.
• Mark that network as metered in your system, so it doesn't start updating.
• Check how much the test used: that figure times the hours in a working day is your emergency budget.

What to switch off once you're in backup mode

Cloud sync, backups, updates and automatic downloads. With all that running, a data plan disappears in a morning and the video call goes badly on top of it.

How much each thing uses is in sharing internet from an eSIM.

A backup that hasn't been tested is an assumption with a technical name.