Considering going down the 4g home broadband route

Ah so a router/WLAN indoors is no longer necessary then.
Does it have an interface page to alter DNS settings and such like a regular router?
 
You do still need something that is the access point, so you could use your Archer for that.

And yes, it has pretty much every possible custom option for DNS. I think you can specify up to 256 DNS servers per interface/port. You can have a different DNS server for different IP address ranges, different users, different firewall rules. Pretty much everything is configurable. There is a very steep learning curve though. I’ve done the MTCNA, MTCRE, MTCTCE, MTCIPv6E and MTCUME certifications and I still don’t know what half the options on the menus do. I’ve still got MTCSE, MTCWE and MTCINE to complete. And there are supposed to be 2 new certifications coming out next year!
 
But don’t necessarily limit yourself to Mikrotik. TP-Link make some very good all-in one Archer MR200 or Archer MR6400 are the part numbers I think. Netgear, D-Link and Draytek also all have something similar and (whisper it) there is new LTE box coming from Ubiquiti very soon.
 
I’ve done the MTCNA, MTCRE, MTCTCE, MTCIPv6E and MTCUME certifications and I still don’t know what half the options on the menus do. I’ve still got MTCSE, MTCWE and MTCINE to complete. And there are supposed to be 2 new certifications coming out next year!
I bow down to your superior knowledge :eek:
I have a switch and the archer. The switch is just to give me extra ethernet points though may not be needed after ditching virgin.
So these two still come into play then.
 
I bow down to your superior knowledge :eek:
I have a switch and the archer. The switch is just to give me extra ethernet points though may not be needed after ditching virgin.
So these two still come into play then.

Don’t bow down to anything unless you’ve seen evidence of something other than a big pile of potential toilet paper.

In the situation you’re in, go to advanced settings on the Archer and put it in Wireless Router mode. Plug the cable from the Mikrotik SXT-LTE into the WAN port on the Archer. That’s it. The Mikrotik will give it a DHCP WAN address and the Archer will handle everything else.
 
Perfect! The archer is in that mode now with the virgin connection.
I'm assuming this route, rather than a dedicated internal 4g router, will always be better?
And you mentioned the marketplace sometimes have these. OC has a marketplace?
 
Perfect! The archer is in that mode now with the virgin connection.
I'm assuming this route, rather than a dedicated internal 4g router, will always be better?
And you mentioned the marketplace sometimes have these. OC has a marketplace?

If you’re happy with what you have now, just change the WAN side and everything will work as before. The router in the SXT is far, far, far more powerful and fully featured than the TP-Link. The only challenge is that because it literally exposes every possible option to the user, it’s REALLY hard to get started with anything other than the basics. @Steveocee has an excellent website and YouTube videos that are excellent and that’s where I started.

Members Market (MM) is where OcUK members can buy and sell their used stuff. I can’t remember what the entry qualifications are, but you basically have to be a long-standing member with a fairly high post count to get access.

[Edit]You need 1000 posts and to have been a member for more than 180 days to access MM[/Edit]
 
Ah you're such a help @WJA96 . I've ordered the three sim so will see what a standard connection throws up when it arrives. And will seek out @Steveocee as I'll need some extra self knowledge ;)
Sadly I don't qualify for MM :p
 
So I've just discovered I can see the top of the mast from the upstairs back bedroom :D

Signal quality is a funny thing - if you can see the mast from an upstairs bedroom often you'll find that generally around it you will get good signal and going to great lengths might not actually improve the signal by any appreciable amount. Something I found is that in most cases getting the antenna up as high as possible had the most effect even over trying to find a location with best line of sight. It can be somewhat unintuitive sometimes what gives the best signal depending on others sources of interference, line of sight and so on.
 
Signal quality is a funny thing - if you can see the mast from an upstairs bedroom often you'll find that generally around it you will get good signal and going to great lengths might not actually improve the signal by any appreciable amount. Something I found is that in most cases getting the antenna up as high as possible had the most effect even over trying to find a location with best line of sight. It can be somewhat unintuitive sometimes what gives the best signal depending on others sources of interference, line of sight and so on.

Rake receivers in the RF front end of modern phone are rather cunning in that they can “add up” all the line of sight energy with the multipath (reflections etc) energy of the desired signal, meaning that you can have better received signal levels and quality when you don’t have line of sight to the base station.

Of course, you phone is throwing way less energy back at the base station than it receives, so less clutter is better in the uplink signal path.
 
Signal quality is a funny thing - if you can see the mast from an upstairs bedroom often you'll find that generally around it you will get good signal and going to great lengths might not actually improve the signal by any appreciable amount. Something I found is that in most cases getting the antenna up as high as possible had the most effect even over trying to find a location with best line of sight. It can be somewhat unintuitive sometimes what gives the best signal depending on others sources of interference, line of sight and so on.

It’s sort of a funny thing but actually very straightforward (no fresnellian puns intended) once you understand the underlying physics.
 
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This is using a pocket wifi and my EE sim so not too bad. It so far hasn't made a massive difference whether the pocket wifi was indoors or outside looking towards the mast. But location of the device to the wifi signal does make a big difference obviously.

None of this matters until I get the Three sim to test though :rolleyes:
 
It’s sort of a funny thing but actually very straightforward (no fresnellian puns intended) once you understand the underlying physics.

Yeah nothing particularly arbitrary to the physics themselves - but for instance a spot with good line of sight might have worse signal due to getting reflected interference from another source compared to a spot with what is poor conditions in terms of line of sight and stuff blocking the signal due to being less in the path of interference, etc. etc.
 
All depends on what network you go with, where you live and how congested the mast is there, i was getting 20meg+ on my Smarty sim at my old house but just moved and now with a stronger signal im getting less than 2meg most of the time.
 
All depends on what network you go with, where you live and how congested the mast is there, i was getting 20meg+ on my Smarty sim at my old house but just moved and now with a stronger signal im getting less than 2meg most of the time.

That’s not 4G, that’s more like 3G.
 
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