Considering going down the 4g home broadband route

darsuke

darsuke

darsuke

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Yorkshire
I didn't know it was a viable option until I saw a couple of posts here recently. It seems to get mixed responses. Some in favour and some less so.

It does have some interesting plus points. Using a smarty sim makes financial sense. Not needing to pay unnecessary line rental. Ability to take it places outside the home should you wish.

I think you have to give it a whirl at your location and decide yourself so that's my consideration now.

But I wanted to know about 4g routers. I have a tp link archer vr900. This doesn't have a sim slot but can accept a USB dongle.

Will this be sufficient as a usable setup or do I need to stump up for a dedicated 4g router?
 
That router with a USB dongle will work but you might find the signal on a USB dongle performs quite a bit worse than a dedicated 4G router though some dongles have removable antennas you can replace with a better aftermarket one.
 
Rroff said:
That router with a USB dongle will work but you might find the signal on a USB dongle performs quite a bit worse than a dedicated 4G router though some dongles have removable antennas you can replace with a better aftermarket one.
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OK great. So the signal to a dongle should be my only real concern. No hardware issues?
 
Why not, we have 7 systems across 3 sites and all our company cars have SIM cards for mapping and data updates. And they all work really well.

Depending on your location you may get faster/slower speeds. What does your mobile phone register on the same network? If you’re pulling down 40-80Mbps on your mobile you should see the same sort of speeds on the router.

My parents have a small cottage in a village near Swindon. They were offered 2Mbps by BT. TWO Mbps. It’s 2019. So I put a Mikrotik SXT (now replaced with an LHG) on the roof and it’s pulling down 70-130Mbps from Vodafone. And I’ve sold 6 other similar setups in the village.

It’s almost too good to be true. It can be a bit weather/ionosphere dependent but I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything less than 70Mpbs and as my dad is 90 this year, he’s not complaining about latency while gaming ;)
 
WJA96 said:
Depending on your location you may get faster/slower speeds. What does your mobile phone register on the same network? If you’re pulling down 40-80Mbps on your mobile you should see the same sort of speeds on the router.

My parents have a small cottage in a village near Swindon. They were offered 2Mbps by BT. TWO Mbps. It’s 2019. So I put a Mikrotik SXT (now replaced with an LHG) on the roof and it’s pulling down 70-130Mbps from Vodafone. And I’ve sold 6 other similar setups in the village.

It’s almost too good to be true. It can be a bit weather/ionosphere dependent but I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything less than 70Mpbs and as my dad is 90 this year, he’s not complaining about latency while gaming ;)
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Impressive! Can an external antenna improve speed greatly compared without?

My EE mobile gets 40Mb but it's the smarty sim I'd be getting. I don't have access to try Three yet. My understanding is that my local mast is a Three/EE shared affair I think if that makes any difference.
 
External antennae (properly installed with clear line of sight to the mast) make a big difference in marginal signal areas. In the centre of London they won’t improve the signal markedly.
 
WJA96 said:
External antennae (properly installed with clear line of sight to the mast) make a big difference in marginal signal areas. In the centre of London they won’t improve the signal markedly.
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I'm half a mile from the mast. I need to get a sim and do some initial checks then.
 
darsuke said:
I'm half a mile from the mast. I need to get a sim and do some initial checks then.
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There are a couple things to check if you’re going for ultimate 4 G speeds.

The first is what kind of modem your device has. A CAT 4 modem theoretically maxes out at 150Mbps but it’s usually a lot less than that. CAT 6 goes to 300Mbps but as far as I’m aware you can only use CAT 6 in places like Manchester and London. There is a CAT 9 but no-one in the UK uses it.

The second thing is whether your SIM is multi-signal enabled. EE used to charge extra for this and it used your data at double the normal rate because it literally used two connections to the mast at the same time and this is what my parents have in Wiltshire.

And then it’s all about reciprocal signal strength. You need to be able receive from and transmit to the cell mast at as close to even strength as possible. At half a mile you should get excellent signal.
 
WJA96 said:
Why not, we have 7 systems across 3 sites and all our company cars have SIM cards for mapping and data updates. And they all work really well.

Depending on your location you may get faster/slower speeds. What does your mobile phone register on the same network? If you’re pulling down 40-80Mbps on your mobile you should see the same sort of speeds on the router.

My parents have a small cottage in a village near Swindon. They were offered 2Mbps by BT. TWO Mbps. It’s 2019. So I put a Mikrotik SXT (now replaced with an LHG) on the roof and it’s pulling down 70-130Mbps from Vodafone. And I’ve sold 6 other similar setups in the village.

It’s almost too good to be true. It can be a bit weather/ionosphere dependent but I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything less than 70Mpbs and as my dad is 90 this year, he’s not complaining about latency while gaming ;)
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Thanks for the useful information. Just been googling for Mikrotik SXT. Where would you put the sim in? I'm trying get my head round how it works.

Thanks
 
There is a small trap-door in the back where the LAN cable and SIM card go.



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wesley said:
Thanks for the useful information. Just been googling for Mikrotik SXT. Where would you put the sim in? I'm trying get my head round how it works.

Thanks
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If you’re interested in a cheap SXT LTE there are sometimes some for sale in Member’s Market ;)
 
FWIW There is a model out now called the SXT-LTE-Kit which is essentially that but with a better modem. A chap I've done some work for ordered one a couple of days ago as he is fed up of his radio broadband provider so wanted to move onto 4G. I've had experience with the MikroTik SXT's before and they work relatively well.

The overall quality of the unit is a bit meh but for £100 total you can't complain that much.
 
The SXT-LTE kit is how MikroTik
Are getting around the whole “no-one knows what’s happening with 5G” issue. They took the SXT-LTE shell and put a dual SIM holder and a PCIe 4G modem in it. So when 5G modems do turn up, you can swap the 4G PCIe card for a 5G PCIe card. Which makes a lot of sense. I don’t think it’s as cheap as £100 though.
 
WJA96 said:
The SXT-LTE kit is how MikroTik
Are getting around the whole “no-one knows what’s happening with 5G” issue. They took the SXT-LTE shell and put a dual SIM holder and a PCIe 4G modem in it. So when 5G modems do turn up, you can swap the 4G PCIe card for a 5G PCIe card. Which makes a lot of sense. I don’t think it’s as cheap as £100 though.
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I've completely misunderstood the MikroTik stuff assuming it's an antenna. So the sim card goes inside and it's a modem.

I'm using a three sim initially, is the non kit version compatible?

Inside the house how will I route and provide WiFi. Just plug the cable into my archer?
 
It’s not just a modem, it’s one of the most fully featured routers on sale at the moment.

Just plug the LAN cable into a switch and you can drive WLAN or whatever from the router on the SXT-LTE.
 
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