4G router

[Jobbo]

I know 5G is here but I only want something cheap for a few months. Having just cancelled Virgin fibre after the end-of-contract 150% price rise I need a router with no commitments and a 4G one with PAYG data SIM seems the way to go; I won't be gaming or anything like that, may watch a bit of Youtube and will definitely be using the wifi cameras and heating controls remotely.

EE offer a £89.99 portable router with 120GB pre-loaded that lasts 12 months rather than expiring in 30 days if unused. Or I can get the same SIM for £50 and buy my own router; I don't need a portable one though there may be some ongoing use to a portable one for holidays if the price is similar.

Plenty of critical reviews of this type of device on Amazon, so it would be good to know if anyone has had a decent experience; is there a decent 4G router out there?

[Mito Man]

I bought this last week as it was on offer and it works perfectly fine
https://www.amazon.co.uk/D-Link-DWR-921 ... hdGY&psc=1

Had the TP Link MR300 before that for 2 years and it was also good and very much the same - got killed by lightning though!

[Jobbo]

That looks sensible - though it's more expensive than the EE portable one and I probably won't end up using it for more than a few months. I wonder if there's a downside to the portable type?

[Mito Man]

The portable ones are fine but don’t have great WiFi strength. May not go across more than a few rooms of your house - fine if you’re happy carrying it around but awkward if you’re in one room working and your wife wants WiFi in the other etc.
Also they usually can’t handle many devices connecting simultaneously to them - usually 10 or so?
You can easily go over that with a few phones, laptops, cameras etc!

[Carlos]

We have a TP-Link M7350, had it for years for caravan/camping. Easy to use and quick but ideally you need to be with in 5m of it.

[Jobbo]

The portable ones are fine but don’t have great WiFi strength. May not go across more than a few rooms of your house - fine if you’re happy carrying it around but awkward if you’re in one room working and your wife wants WiFi in the other etc.
Also they usually can’t handle many devices connecting simultaneously to them - usually 10 or so?
You can easily go over that with a few phones, laptops, cameras etc!

That D-link says 10 connections, though to be honest I was just going to plug whatever I buy into the existing mesh network and not use its built-in wifi. Which probably rules out the portable ones because they don't tend to have ethernet ports. Any idea if the ports are gigabit?

ETA: cheers Carl, the TP Link devices seem to get generally better reviews than other brands so that's tempting.

[Ascender]

Yeah, apart from the obvious downsides of the portable ones (smaller aerials, weak wi-fi etc) I've found they just don't seem as reliable as the larger ones if you're using it as a proper home router for a few users. I definitely get more interruptions and inconsistent speeds compared to a larger one.

Great for adhoc use on the move, camping etc (although even then we use an external aerial) but not so much to replace a broadband connection.

[Mito Man]

The portable ones are fine but don’t have great WiFi strength. May not go across more than a few rooms of your house - fine if you’re happy carrying it around but awkward if you’re in one room working and your wife wants WiFi in the other etc.
Also they usually can’t handle many devices connecting simultaneously to them - usually 10 or so?
You can easily go over that with a few phones, laptops, cameras etc!

That D-link says 10 connections, though to be honest I was just going to plug whatever I buy into the existing mesh network and not use its built-in wifi. Which probably rules out the portable ones because they don't tend to have ethernet ports. Any idea if the ports are gigabit?

ETA: cheers Carl, the TP Link devices seem to get generally better reviews than other brands so that's tempting.

No, only 100mbps on eternet, you need the more expensive TP link MR600 model for that.

[McSwede]

I know 5G is here but I only want something cheap for a few months. Having just cancelled Virgin fibre after the end-of-contract 150% price rise I need a router with no commitments and a 4G one with PAYG data SIM seems the way to go; I won't be gaming or anything like that, may watch a bit of Youtube and will definitely be using the wifi cameras and heating controls remotely.

EE offer a £89.99 portable router with 120GB pre-loaded that lasts 12 months rather than expiring in 30 days if unused. Or I can get the same SIM for £50 and buy my own router; I don't need a portable one though there may be some ongoing use to a portable one for holidays if the price is similar.

Plenty of critical reviews of this type of device on Amazon, so it would be good to know if anyone has had a decent experience; is there a decent 4G router out there?

I just got an EE 4g router for the MiL from £16 &25gb per month recently.

[Sundayjumper]

Funnily enough I’m posting this via a Vodafone / Huawei R219h because my broadband has failed this morning

Vodafone gave it to us a few years ago when they botched our new contract with them. Works well for what it is, we use it on holidays, just the already mentioned caveat for signal strengths. You need a good 4G signal in the first place, obvs, and that will apply to any of these devices.

[Jobbo]

To close this off, I got a TP-Link AC1200 which has gigabit ethernet ports and is 4G+ apparently. They're . I also got a 120GB pre-loaded data SIM from EE for £50 which lasts 12 months if I don't top it up. Was a piece of cake to set up - literally just put in the SIM card, plug it in and plug in my mesh system with an ethernet cable and turned it on; it just worked. The only downside was that I dithered over what to buy and then needed it at the last minute, so had to buy from Argos and pay about £15 more than from Amazon. Oh well.

Seems utterly stable so far. I imagine the ping would make it nasty to use for online gaming but otherwise it's really not distinguishable from having a normal home connection.

[Mito Man]

Annoyingly in the SE they seem to be binning off 3G as they switch to 5G so in one location I used to have 3G and 5G only (4G on 1 bar and too unreliable to use) so I’m still waiting for an affordable 5G router, makes no sense when 5G phones are relatively cheap but a 5g router from Netgear costs £700 with no real alternatives.

[Jobbo]

I considered a 5G router but they're 3x the price and I don't think 4G is about to be switched off. Plenty of 3G switch-offs going on, though, since that frees up the spectrum for 5G. Which would be great except I still don't see 5G except in town/city centres.

[Mito Man]

I found the opposite in Kent, most the phone masts are in the countryside so you end up with 5G in the woods and fields and by the time you get to town centres it barely works

[Sundayjumper]

...by the time you get to town centres it barely works

Buildings do have that effect.

[Beany]

Annoyingly in the SE they seem to be binning off 3G as they switch to 5G so in one location I used to have 3G and 5G only (4G on 1 bar and too unreliable to use) so I’m still waiting for an affordable 5G router, makes no sense when 5G phones are relatively cheap but a 5g router from Netgear costs £700 with no real alternatives.

I used a cheap client bridge wifi device to hotspot off of BT FON hotpots locally (someone let me borrow their login details..) and plumbed that into my router when I moved house. Twice.

I'd assume similar could be done with a cheap phone/5G sim in hotspot mode, rather than public wifi. And it wouldn't cost £700....

[Mito Man]

Is it possible to get the hotspot off a mobile phone to be transmitted across a router?

[Beany]

By using a wireless client bridge, I'd assume so - that's what I was describing above.

You'd need to do some research on it though - it's really not something that can be described in a forum post.

Might be worth speaking to a local IT firm about it, ideally ones who do maintenance for local companies, not just some nerd in a shop; they've probably set up bridges for local factories etc, and it's a variation on that.

[Mito Man]

I reckon by the time I drag out a local IT company here and end up with a complicated system I can’t look after myself I’d just be better off with the 5G router. I’ll wait a bit, they’re bound to come down in price as it becomes more universal.

[Beany]

Go to a local well reputed IT place and show them this as a starter for ten, etc. That's the basic concept. I don't have a client bridge any more so I can't test this for realsies so don't take this as gospel.

The idea is that on, say, a factory, they might have a leased line to one building, but not the other for cost reasons, which is quite common - so you have a pair of devices with line of sight that make the 'bridge' between two wired networks. They don't tend to be fast (a couple of hundred meg) but for just flinging office documents and watching youtube or occasional video calling, it's fine.

This would be the same, but one side of the bridge would be a phone being used as ahotspot device (wireless bridges don't typically have to talk just to each other - they'll talk to any wifi device), and a little config tweeking so that it sees all your devices as being on the same network (IE have the local router do the networking, not the phone, as it'll be restricted to, say, five devices tops, etc.)

OK, you're double NAT'd but it's better than a kick in the teeth.

Right click and open for less crunchiness. Yeah, I did this in paint, get over it. If you want in Visio, it'll be £200

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