****The Official 5G Home Broadband Thread**** (Three/EE/Vodafone/etc)

Just ordered the new Zyxel FWA70. Has a slightly newer rel 5G modem and some other little tweaks which hopefully will improve my fringe connectivity stability. Also supports n75. I think it also has a wider beam pattern. Anywho, exciting to see how it compares. The FWA710 works well and gets me good speeds for the distance, but the FWA70 should be a nice little step in the right direction with some newer silicone to help. I'm not expecting anymore throughput but yeah, we shall see. Exited to compare the two and if it works well, I'll most likely put the FWA710 up for sale in MM if anyone is interested. Won't be asking much.
 
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Firegod said:
Exited to compare the two and if it works well, I'll most likely put the FWA710 up for sale in MM if anyone is interested. Won't be asking much.
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You'll have to tell me how it goes, might be interested in having a play with the 710, have you run it in bridge mode at all?
 
Ive been fiddling lately trying to get dual stack ipv4/ipv6 working with the Firewalla. I'm about 99% there with it but couldn't get part of the info to pass from the Zyxel to the Firewalla. I thought it might have just been an EE SA network quirk. Maybes not fully setup for dual stack on the network here. But later, I found the Firewalla had blocked an IPv6 request from the Zyxel. :cry: Haven't gone back to retry it again... yet.
 
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Firegod said:
Just ordered the new Zyxel FWA70. Has a slightly newer rel 5G modem and some other little tweaks which hopefully will improve my fringe connectivity stability. Also supports n75. I think it also has a wider beam pattern. Anywho, exciting to see how it compares. The FWA710 works well and gets me good speeds for the distance, but the FWA70 should be a nice little step in the right direction with some newer silicone to help. I'm not expecting anymore throughput but yeah, we shall see. Exited to compare the two and if it works well, I'll most likely put the FWA710 up for sale in MM if anyone is interested. Won't be asking much.
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Report back please on the FWA70 when you get it, I've been looking at it for a while. I assume it's an all-plastic housing and the antenna is directional?
 
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There is a really good deal on now for Three 5G 1000GB per month for around £3.50 per month. Not sure if I'm allowed to post a link but you will find it if you go to HotUKDeals.
 
Thought I would post my thoughts on Three 5G with a Zyxel NR5103E V2 router after having used it exclusively for my home broadband for the last 2 years.

Speed wise it has been wildly variable. Some days I only get 20mbps other days I have had over 200mbps. It has for the most part always been at a usable speed. Ping has been around 50ms most of the time which has been fine for me as I don't really play online multiplayer games except Gran Turismo 7 which works fine with that ping.

Reliability wise, it is less reliable than fibre broadband. I have probably had 5 days during the two years where the internet has been unusable usually due to some sort of maintenance on the mast (at least that is what the Three status checker says). Typically the maintenance lasts 3 or 4 hours and has nearly always been on a weekend.

It may seem to anyone reading this that it sounds a bit mediocre and it kind of is I suppose but the thing that makes me OK with it is the price. It was costing me £6.50 per month for unlimited data. Way way cheaper than fibre.

Now that I am at the end of my 2 year contract I had the choice of going with fibre or sticking with 5G and the decision was made easy for me as there is a new deal for the equivalent of £3.50 per month for 1000GB. Basically 10 times cheaper than fibre. Hopefully going forward the service at least stays the same, fingers crossed it improves with the Three / Vodafone merger.

All in all, if you are in a strong 5G area I highly recommend it for the cheap price alone so long as you can live with worse performance than fibre generally speaking.
 
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So the FWA70 has arrived. Usual EU nonsense for the power injector. Thankfully I use UK Zyxel POE injectors so that EU rubbish can stay in the box. Must be too much effort to ship with a UK plug (this is direct from their store as well). Anyway, little gripe but none the less, unboxed it all. Now it says it comes with wall and pole mounting hardware. Does it balls. Unless you call x2 clips, pole mounting hardware. Where is the back plate / mounting plate to go on the unit. Nothing. Raised a support ticket. Meanwhile I remember they sent my FWA710 as a replacement for my NR7101 and that came with mounting hardware. Sure enough, open the box, and I have a myriad of bits of mounting kit. I'm hoping I can cobble something together without having to take down the mounting kit on the FWA710 outside. Standing at the very top of a triple extending ladder against the gable end is never fun. lol. I was hoping for a quick swap but it looks more like a tear down and then into the shed to work something out! In the meantime I'll wait to see what the support ticket comes back with. £400 for a router and can't even give you a bloody backing plate.
 
Firegod said:
£400 for a router and can't even give you a bloody backing plate.
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It's so frustrating when it is an outdoor piece of equipment for it to not have that essential item included. Hopefully the support people will send you something out, as I cannot believe it wouldn't be included.
 
I think their definition of "wall mount kit" is two screws and wall plugs to hook the device over. What is the spacing of the 4 screw inserts on the rear?
 
Caged said:
I think their definition of "wall mount kit" is two screws and wall plugs to hook the device over. What is the spacing of the 4 screw inserts on the rear?
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Yeah I can see the x2 screws and x2 wall plugs for mounting on the wall in the box. But x2 circlips for the pole mounting are useless without a bracket. :p FYI the hole spacing on the rear, horizontal spacing is 69mm and vertical spacing is 67mm CTC (+-1mm).

EDIT: Looks like Zyxel do Accessory kits. Scroll down here for ACCESSORY-ZZ0103F and ACCESSORY-ZZ0106F - https://mysupport.zyxel.com/hc/en-u...ing-Setup-with-Versatile-Mounting-Accessories

I'll go and add that into my support ticket as well.
 
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That is ridiculous, if they'd made them 75x75 then it's a VESA standard and they'd not have to go anywhere near a custom bracket design.

I'm a bit put off this now, it seems like they've tried to value engineer it but it's still £400 with the VAT. The Unifi outdoor 5G product looks superior (and has eSIM support), but it requires a Unifi gateway which I don't use.
 
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So mystery solved chaps. Support have come back to me today. They now sell an "advanced mounting kit", but it isn't mentioned on the store page. It is on the product page from Zyxel. Scroll down here.

How do you mount the Router without that kit then? You use the same points that the wall mount uses.



I'm no way using that for constant use, to me, that is going to be mega prone to failure. The plastic it loops through is very thin. That could easily fatigue with movement or over tightening the metal clip. I will use that method temporarily, as I have asked for the advanced kit, but support need to speak with sales on how I go about purchasing it. So I'm not waiting for that to turn up. I want to get on testing it this weekend (if the weather holds).

EDIT: Will fire it up tonight indoors and get it configured up to match the FWA710 as much as possible ready to hopefully just swap over the SIM and mount it.

Cheers.
 
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It feels like too much of a step back for a £50 saving over the FWA710 and a slight bump in radio spec, especially with the additional cost of the mounting hardware. No eSIM support either which for an outdoor device adds quite a lot of work to changing networks.
 
Caged said:
It feels like too much of a step back for a £50 saving over the FWA710 and a slight bump in radio spec, especially with the additional cost of the mounting hardware. No eSIM support either which for an outdoor device adds quite a lot of work to changing networks.
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eSIM would be wonderful.
 
To me the Teltonika OTD500 seems like a better package, the only negative I can see is the ports are 1Gb rather than 2.5Gb, but I can't see it being hugely impactful.
 
Another brilliant thing. :cry: Whilst we're on a moaning roll.... they give you a flat 10m cat6 cable. Fine I thought, I have my own cable run installed out to the router, so that can stay in the box. Opened up the Router and thought, nicely done. Nice tight seal and nice bung for the ethernet cable. Captive screws, good thinking. Oh... wait.

Looks like my cable (a normal ethernet cable cat6a) won't fit through without modification! That is why they give you their own. FFS.





EDIT: Thankfully cutting off the rubber tab cover on the ethernet cable gets it through. So no need to alter the casing!
 
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Sorry for the spam but just to warn others about the FWA70 - I've heard back from support - the separate pole kit is not available yet. :mad: Seems like they haven't got their ducks in a row on this one. I think I'll bring all the mounting hardware down, gather the spares, and see what I can use to make my own bracket whilst hopefully keeping any duplicates in the original box for selling on.

Anyway, interface wise, exactly the same for the FWA70 and FWA710. No new settings or layout. So muscle memory meant I tweaked the various bits in a few minutes. I was going to leave it in dual stack mode but thought better of it. Back to IPv4 only, and I'll test dual stack another day.

Weekend job should be:

1. Bring down the old kit and mounting hardware. (15 minutes)
2. Investigate possibly making new Frankenstein bracket. (45 minutes)
3. Swap over SIM. (1 minute)
3. Cut rubber tab cover off outside ethernet cable. (1 minute)
4. Mount new router. (15 minutes)
5. Test. (1 week)

Also got a plan that if testing goes well how to amend the rubber bung to take the thicker ethernet cable. But don't want to modify that until I've tested as if no good, it needs to be returned. Not that I think it won't work just fine. Better safe than sorry.
 
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