How and on what is it easier and cheaper to set up channel reservation + channel balancing \ merge?

Question

System administration

Good afternoon. Two channels come to the remote office from different providers (A - main and B - backup, worse). In case of problems with the main channel (sometimes there is an uplink, but there is no network and pings do not go), a specially trained user goes to the back room and reboots the equipment of channel A or, if this does not help to restore the network, pokes out the patch cord of equipment A from the router and sticks the patch cord of equipment B in its place. Both providers come to the back room in an unknown way, but their terminations are 8P8C, which eliminates the need for troubles. It is necessary to optimize a specially trained user and replace him with a piece of hardware that can do the same or even more, but better and faster. That is, you need a router with a channel reservation function (and as a bonus, if possible, "two in one" - combining the channels of two providers to increase the speed). This is where my knowledge of the topic ends, Google gives praise to Mikrotik and ciscos, a limited budget makes you look only at the first one (and at analogues from the price category).
What proven models do you recommend? Or are they all good and customizable? I read about a similar solution on Mikrotik RB951G-2HnD, but the picture confuses me with the absence of two WANs - or are they assigned from lans? And is it possible to do channel balancing on this model, so that instead of one good and one bad one in turn, there are one and a half good ones in terms of speed, albeit not always?
Also, there are already D-Link DES-1100-24 and D-Link DGS-1210-52 in the back room - can I do something similar with them, or am I looking at the wrong characteristics at all? And which ones to look at? Another piece of iron D-Link is also suitable.

Answer 1

How and on what is it easier and cheaper to set up channel reservation + channel balancing \ merge?

Mikrotik is the most convenient and cheapest solution, but not the only one.

combining the channels of two providers to increase the speed

Difficult, but if you want, you can.
Rarely leads to an increase in speed, as a rule, the increase is quite small. 10Mbps + 10Mbps = 12-13Mbps in most cases.
Often it happens like this - 100Mbps + 10Mbps = 11Mbps.
Often leads to a decrease in speed,

I read about a similar solution on Mikrotik RB951G-2HnD, but the picture confuses me with the absence of two WANs

WAN is the port to which the link comes from the external network. If you connected a link from an external network to this port, then this is WAN, if you did not connect it, then LAN.
By the way - on this model, it seems that nothing but common sense interferes with making at least 800 WAN ports.

And is it possible to do channel balancing on this model, so that instead of one good and one bad one in turn, there are one and a half good ones in terms of speed, albeit not always?

You can do balancing.
Instead of one bad and one good, there will be one bad.

Answer 2

You can't check this on switches. On Mikrotik, you can crank it in different ways.
The easiest way is without scripts, it is possible to switch scripts by making extended checks, etc.
951, it may well be, or rather, any piece of iron with ROS can do it.
P.S. On Mikrotik there is no concept of a wan port.

Answer 3

How and on what is it easier and cheaper to set up channel reservation + channel balancing \ merge?

"Easier" can be "cheaper" only by cutting off functions that a normal SOHO user does not need, so no SOHO router has two WAN ports :) In the conditions of this task, if "cheaper" is at the forefront, then mikrotik.
No. From the word at all.

combining the channels of two providers to increase the speed

Channels cannot be summed completely. That is, for example, it will not be possible to download one large file at speed (prov1 + prov2). It will be possible to scatter services over different channels - mail there, web here, vpn somewhere else ... It will be possible to download files simultaneously from two channels for those protocols where there is a jump in parts - for example, torrents.
But since the download speed is a constantly changing value, it is impossible to guarantee that (wire1+wire2) > (wire1) is impossible. The presence of two channels, as a rule, does not increase speed, but reliability.