4G router recommendation?

InfiniteNoise · 31 Jan 2020 at 19:29

So I'm looking for a decent 4G router, but I'm not sure what to go for.

I have to return the provided mobile router (Huawei E5573bs-322) from Three since they let me go penalty-free, so I'm looking for a replacement.

Ideally I'd like a router where I can attach a Raspberry Pi to and enjoy the benefits of Pi-hole's network wide blocking features.

Budget: no more than £100, but I can maybe push it up a bit depending on the router's features.

Rroff · 31 Jan 2020 at 19:39

I found the TP-Link MR6400 good if a little basic - gets about as good reception on the stock antenna as you could hope for and on the latest firmware reliable (older firmware I was having to reboot it once a month but they seem to have fixed that) otherwise if you want more features then look at Mikrotik.

InfiniteNoise · 31 Jan 2020 at 19:55

Hm, I was looking at TP-Link's MR200/400/600 range, seems to tick all the boxes.

If it lets me change the DNS (along with other options like disabling DHCP, etc) so I can point it to Pi's IP address, it's all good.

ANDARIAL · 1 Feb 2020 at 08:42

Had a look at
Mikrotik SXT LTE
You can mount this outside on a pole high up for better signal or,like i have ,in your attic
READ the advert carefully though as some come `without` a 4g card and `some` have a wifi card too

WJA96 · 1 Feb 2020 at 09:15

ANDARIAL said:
Had a look at
Mikrotik SXT LTE
You can mount this outside on a pole high up for better signal or,like i have ,in your attic
READ the advert carefully though as some come `without` a 4g card and `some` have a wifi card too

No SXT LTEs come with WLAN. SXT is Mikrotik’s designation for the housing shape. That’s all. There are a multitude of SXT models. Some of which are 802.11bgn, some are 802.11a, some are even 802.11ac but only the SXT LTE and SXT 4G comes with a WWAN modem built in and they don’t support WLAN by themselves. They need a separate access point.

Make sure you buy the newest CAT6 SXT LTE as it does 2G, 3 G and 4G data over all bands worldwide with carrier aggregation if available. The older LTE CAT4 only supports 4G up to 150Mbps against 300Mbps with the CAT6 device. Do be aware though that EE ‘charge’ you double the used data against your allowance if you use the carrier aggregation function.

And don’t buy the SXT 4G kit because it only has a 4G modem, it can’t drop back to 2G or 3G if the 4 G signal goes off.

One major benefit of running with Mikrotiks hardware platform is that it’s relatively straightforward to upen the up and replace the old 3G/4G/LTE modem mini-PCIe card with the newest one. And should apply to 5G as well, assuming it doesn’t need a completely different antenna setup.

If you want something a bit less extreme that does have WLAN built-in then look at Mikrotik Audience LTE or if you want the most extreme LTE solution then Mikrotik LHG LTE could be what you’re after. There is a recent thread on here from @bledd (who knows his stuff) where he used a Teltonika LTE modem/router/AP with great success.

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/spec-me-4g-mobile-router-with-ethernet.18870730/

ANDARIAL · 1 Feb 2020 at 09:24

Thanks for the clarification WJA96

I have the `older` one and is only 4G but was looking at a few earlier for a neighbour and they mentioned wifi (I thought that this meant that they were `built in` )

WJA96 · 1 Feb 2020 at 09:50

ANDARIAL said:
Thanks for the clarification WJA96
I have the `older` one and is only 4G but was looking at a few earlier for a neighbour and they mentioned wifi (I thought that this meant that they were `built in` )

Oh I wish they would build that device!

Haze · 1 Feb 2020 at 09:52

My landline broadband connection sucks, 500k down... Thinking about going down this route and getting rid of the landline

WJA96 · 1 Feb 2020 at 10:04

I put a Mikrotik LHG LTE into a rental property near Malmesbury where the fastest connection on a landline was 2.5Mbps/512kbps and the landlord was facing a tenants revolt because of the bad WLAN. Using a Vodafone Unlimited 5G card (£30/month) on test I was pulling down 85Mbps consistently with about 45Mbps upload speed. It’s on a pole outside the house, fed into the attic through an existing TV antenna hole and hooked up to a UniFi USG, US-16-PoE Switch and a UniFi UAP-HDNano. The total cost was £1000 once all the cables, connectors and time were accounted for but it’s a heck of a system supporting 4 students all playing games and streaming whatever students stream these days...

Alpherah · 1 Feb 2020 at 13:42

I was under the impression CGNAT causes issues with gaming?

WJA96 · 1 Feb 2020 at 15:01

Alpherah said:
I was under the impression CGNAT causes issues with gaming?

No-one has complained about anything as yet. And they are a very ‘moany’ group in that house!

InfiniteNoise · 1 Feb 2020 at 17:47

Haze said:
My landline broadband connection sucks, 500k down... Thinking about going down this route and getting rid of the landline

This is why I've been using 4G to do get some stuff done, my home broadband connection's upload speed is only 0.7/mb/s, it's awful and I can't stream like that, with Vodafone and EE 4G, I get 10mb/s+, sometimes double that depending on time of the day.

Some good suggestions here, 'fortunately' I appear to have killed my Vodafone SIM when I pulled it out of the mobile router, so that gives me more time to look around and decide which router to go for while I wait for the replacement SIM to be delivered.

Rroff · 4 Feb 2020 at 18:08

Alpherah said:
I was under the impression CGNAT causes issues with gaming?

It is a kind of hit and miss situation and I'm not sure the rhyme or reasons to it - some routers like those in the TP-Link series and MikrotikI mentioned above seem to somehow side-step a lot of the potential CGNAT problems while other routers and/or tethering from a phone or LTE enabled tablet often you run into the worst of those problems (on some setups I can't even log into Steam). You will still likely find issues with certain games with lobby systems, etc. where you can't be host and might delay matchmaking finding games as you can't peer with certain clients alone for varying reasons, which might make things harder on games that aren't very popular any more, but so far I've not found it a problem.

Though I think the mobile networks are getting a bit more congested with more people using it as a broadband substitute - I still get really good speeds at night but sometimes during the day I'm dropping to around 20Mbit/s at times where I had no problem getting 30 on my 4G before.