4G Router

Sirrel Squirrel

Sirrel Squirrel

Sirrel Squirrel

Soldato
Joined
5 Aug 2003
Posts
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Location
Essex
I'm moving house soon and the area has terrible broadband speeds but 4G coverage is fantastic so I was thinking of not bothering with a phone line and just tethering from my phone but that got me thinking, does such a thing as a normal router exist that takes a Sim card for 4G data but still works like a normal router with Ethernet connections and Wi-fi?

edit/ so turns out they do exist, anyone have any recommendations?
 
I know there are routers that accepts a USB 4G dongle but...

How much data will you use a month? That will be the most limiting factor for 4G. Which network offers 4G in your area?
 
I'm fairly sure most routers can do this now but you can kiss good bye to anything nearly real time (skype video, vpn, gaming) as the latency will punish you hard.

No alternative providers around?
 
Hopefully it'll just be an interim gap for now as fibre is meant to be rolled out by end of 2016. Currently BT seem to be the only people willing to supply the property, the others say the line speed isn't fast enough with BT estimating 1-3Mbps. 4G on the otherhand hits nearly 50Mbps in the area when tested on EE.

I noticed EE has a shared plan where you get another sim to share your data with so I was going to up my allowance to say 30GB a month and then use that. Luckily my work pays my mobile phone bill :D
 
Peplink make some really good routers that you can either buy with the modems built in, or you connect a USB 4G dongle.
 
Sirrel Squirrel said:
Hopefully it'll just be an interim gap for now as fibre is meant to be rolled out by end of 2016. Currently BT seem to be the only people willing to supply the property, the others say the line speed isn't fast enough with BT estimating 1-3Mbps. 4G on the otherhand hits nearly 50Mbps in the area when tested on EE.

I noticed EE has a shared plan where you get another sim to share your data with so I was going to up my allowance to say 30GB a month and then use that. Luckily my work pays my mobile phone bill :D
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Just make sure you limit the data usage, 30GB will go down fast. Honestly any activity that can take advantage of the speed will eat that up in a couple of days.
 
Do what my mate does with his ADSL and 4g. He load balances web traffic out of ADSL while stuff like games he takes out of 4g.

Seems to work pretty well.
 
Steveocee said:
I'm fairly sure most routers can do this now but you can kiss good bye to anything nearly real time (skype video, vpn, gaming) as the latency will punish you hard.
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Latency should be fine, it's significantly better on 4G than 3G. I often tether my laptop to my 4G mobile and I can use SIP stuff without any problems and SIP is very latency sensitive.
 
the-evaluator said:
Latency should be fine, it's significantly better on 4G than 3G. I often tether my laptop to my 4G mobile and I can use SIP stuff without any problems and SIP is very latency sensitive.
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The average latency can be fairly low but its a long way from the consistency of a good fixed line which may or may not impact on how useful it is for real time stuff. Out in low population areas I've seen 40ms ping times with about 40ms variation but no real issues whereas in London I've seen 60-80ms average latency with frequent spikes over 1000ms.
 
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Thanks for all the advice, are there any recommended routers, the Huawei B593s-22 seems to get good reviews for performance and you can add external antennas should you need to. Or there's the ASUS 4G-N12 but it seems a bit newer so not many reviews that I can find.
 
I've setup a number of sites in work using the Huawei B593s-22 LTE/4G as a redundancy or main source of internet due to poor or non-existing BB coverage. Haven't had any problems so far and easy setup. Option of 2 external antenna's boosts the use of this product as long as 4G coverage is good in that area.
 
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