4G wifi routers - home broadband over 4G

[Rockburner]

Does anyone on here use a 4G router/hub for their internet, as opposed to regular wired FTTC broadband?

New house is nearly 4Km from the nearest cabinet and so we're being promised speeds not great than about 15Mb/s (half-decent 4G can do twice that), and only being guaranteed 6Mb/s.

The house is (apparently) in a good position for 4G though, so I want to look into get an unlimited Data sim (around £35), along with a 4g hub/router.

I actually have a Huawei E5577C which, with an external antenna, gives me nigh on 70Mb/s - but the wifi strength itself isn't great, so a better hub/router may be on the cards. (We may need wifi extenders - the house has solid walls)

We need to be able to do the following:
a) Teams call to the office (probably the heaviest usage in terms of data/speed)
b) access the office networks and access files etc (probably the lightest use - in terms of data/speed)
c) Stream standard quality (not HD) TV and films (eg Netflix and the like, probably to a SmartTV*). I've tried streaming from Netflix on my current hotspot thing (the Huawei E5577C mentioned above) and it worked fine through the laptop.


So - does anyone else run their broadband in this fashion and if so - what have you found that works best, or doesn't work?






* not bought yet, but would mean we wouldn't need to run Netflix etc through a laptop.

[KungFooBob]

My FiL is 'off grid' so to speak. He's no lecky, piped gas or telephone line. He lives in a recently built house on his farm, it's all stone with three bison beam floors.

I got him a TP-Link Archer router and he slotted a Virgin 4G unlimited sim (vodafone network).

The router sits near one the loft room velux windows and there's a handful of wireless repeaters scattered about.

He's gets enough bandwidth to steam stuff in HD on a couple of TV's, I've not done a speed test recently, but everything seems to work fine.

The biggest issue is that you don't get assigned a unique WAN IP (neither static or DHCP). It gives you a DHCP IP on a Vodafone LAN, which then breaks out to the internet on a WAN IP shared by a few thousand other users using NAT. It means Dynamic DNS just won't work, but you can get round it using VPN if you need too, we only discovered this when he wanted to access his CCTV cameras externally.

[Rockburner]

My FiL is 'off grid' so to speak. He's no lecky, piped gas or telephone line. He lives in a recently built house on his farm, it's all stone with three bison beam floors.

I got him a TP-Link Archer router and he slotted a Virgin 4G unlimited sim (vodafone network).

The router sits near one the loft room velux windows and there's a handful of wireless repeaters scattered about.

He's gets enough bandwidth to steam stuff in HD on a couple of TV's, I've not done a speed test recently, but everything seems to work fine.

The biggest issue is that you don't get assigned a unique WAN IP (neither static or DHCP). It gives you a DHCP IP on a Vodafone LAN, which then breaks out to the internet on a WAN IP shared by a few thousand other users using NAT. It means Dynamic DNS just won't work, but you can get round it using VPN if you need too, we only discovered this when he wanted to access his CCTV cameras externally.

Hmm - cheers for that - good info!

What wifi repeaters are being used? Hopefully we won't need more than one or two.

I don't think we'll need access into the network from outside (I'm assuming he's trying to look at the camera feeds on his phone when the phone is on it's own 4G connection?), but the non-static IP might cause an issue for access into our respective office VPNs - will have to look into that.
Having said that - I've never had an issue connecting to the office VPN using my EE data-only sim, so I'm assuming that the external IPs are relatively static within the EE network. I'd probably be going with EE simply because I'm already a customer and I can (hopefully) negotiate a good price for the sim.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

You could just use your mobile phone with a hot spot, the Huawei doesn't offer anything your phone doesn't. Your bandwidth bottleneck is going to be the 4G bit, the 70Mbps quoted is in perfect conditions, you'll be getting about 40 in real world conditions, but it's a very reliable, clean 40.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

My FiL is 'off grid' so to speak. He's no lecky, piped gas or telephone line. He lives in a recently built house on his farm, it's all stone with three bison beam floors.

I got him a TP-Link Archer router and he slotted a Virgin 4G unlimited sim (vodafone network).

The router sits near one the loft room velux windows and there's a handful of wireless repeaters scattered about.

He's gets enough bandwidth to steam stuff in HD on a couple of TV's, I've not done a speed test recently, but everything seems to work fine.

The biggest issue is that you don't get assigned a unique WAN IP (neither static or DHCP). It gives you a DHCP IP on a Vodafone LAN, which then breaks out to the internet on a WAN IP shared by a few thousand other users using NAT. It means Dynamic DNS just won't work, but you can get round it using VPN if you need too, we only discovered this when he wanted to access his CCTV cameras externally.

That's how Virgin Media allocate IPs and you only get a fixed IP on ADSL of you pay extra for it, shouldn't make any difference to remote access working unless they restrict access by source IP, which is piss easy to do, but an administrative nightmare.

You can get fixed IPs on SIM cards, Three can do it, though they might not offer this service to the public, I can ask their senior network designer after her Xmas break as we're pretty much best pals these days. She's a lovely young woman from China who used to work for Huawei and designed Telefonicas network core, we've been working together on an experimental 5G project.

[Kneerly Down]

Are the MNOs going to be moving customers over to IPv6?
I noticed my Vodafone 4G connection is only getting the (presumably shared) IPv4 address.

Presume it'll be complicated by a lot of the older M2M stuff being IPv4 only.

[Rockburner]

You could just use your mobile phone with a hot spot, the Huawei doesn't offer anything your phone doesn't. Your bandwidth bottleneck is going to be the 4G bit, the 70Mbps quoted is in perfect conditions, you'll be getting about 40 in real world conditions, but it's a very reliable, clean 40.

True, but then i can't make or take phone calls. (Afaik)

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

Are the MNOs going to be moving customers over to IPv6?
I noticed my Vodafone 4G connection is only getting the (presumably shared) IPv4 address.

Presume it'll be complicated by a lot of the older M2M stuff being IPv4 only.

I don't think so, MPLS has pretty much removed the need for IPv6, broadcast and multicast don't really work in v6 networks, and everyone has their software working in v4 so there's no push to go to v6.

Your 4G device will be getting a unique (to it's network) IP, probably a private one rather than a public, if you do whatismyIP you'll see the NAT'd public IP. Modern mobile telephone networks are really interesting in how they associate an IP to a SIM card, they're also pure layer 3 networks and every packet is routed so you can't see anyone else's traffic, which is very secure and also used less bandwidth.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

You could just use your mobile phone with a hot spot, the Huawei doesn't offer anything your phone doesn't. Your bandwidth bottleneck is going to be the 4G bit, the 70Mbps quoted is in perfect conditions, you'll be getting about 40 in real world conditions, but it's a very reliable, clean 40.

True, but then i can't make or take phone calls. (Afaik)

Depends on the phone, some you can, some you can't.

[Kneerly Down]

Modern mobile telephone networks are really interesting in how they associate an IP to a SIM card, they're also pure layer 3 networks and every packet is routed so you can't see anyone else's traffic, which is very secure and also used less bandwidth.

I left Motorola just before we launched the International 3200 so am a bit behind on how the mobile networks are doing this internety stuff!

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

Modern mobile telephone networks are really interesting in how they associate an IP to a SIM card, they're also pure layer 3 networks and every packet is routed so you can't see anyone else's traffic, which is very secure and also used less bandwidth.

I left Motorola just before we launched the International 3200 so am a bit behind on how the mobile networks are doing this internety stuff!

If I remember, I'll ask, I do the IP side of it, and for me it's packets in at the CPE/Phone, packets out at the core router.

[the_priest]

As to the internal share internet question, I've just started using a Mesh system in my home. As you know, not big, but wifi did not get to the upstairs with any success. Mesh sorted that and allows for HD streaming on 4 devices in the house at the same time. We have 60 down and 20 up fibre.

I'm using these bought from Argos - https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9180581

[KungFooBob]

I've just had the most amazing idea.

How do I get on Dragons Den?

Smoke detectors, with built in WiFi repeaters.

I've got wired smoke detectors, one at the top and one at the bottom of the stairs, why not just build a repeater/mesh device in to them?

[Zimbo]

I ditched my wired internet six months ago and have been using a TP Link router since with no real issues, on a Smarty unlimited SIM card.
TP-LINK MR600
No issues streaming HD TV, seems to give 60 - 70MBps download and 30 upload speeds, not missing the wired broadband at all so far.

[Noggin]

A few people here use 5g 'hub' thingies instead of proper wifi (mostly because for a chalet for the season you have to pay for a whole year - the 5g thingies you just pay when you have connected in a month)

Anyway - if there is good signal, they are brilliant apparently!

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

I've just had the most amazing idea.

How do I get on Dragons Den?

Smoke detectors, with built in WiFi repeaters.

I've got wired smoke detectors, one at the top and one at the bottom of the stairs, why not just build a repeater/mesh device in to them?

Already been done, I think by Edimax.

[Rockburner]

I ditched my wired internet six months ago and have been using a TP Link router since with no real issues, on a Smarty unlimited SIM card.
TP-LINK MR600
No issues streaming HD TV, seems to give 60 - 70MBps download and 30 upload speeds, not missing the wired broadband at all so far.

I think that's the router I've been looking at. Just need to decide which mobile service to use.

[Zimbo]

I went with Smarty 'cos its on the 3 network, which has good coverage round me, and it's cheap (£18 a month).
I like the TP Link stuff because it's easy to set up and customise using the "Tether" app on your phone, rather than having to log onto the router IP page and remember all the passwords.

[Rockburner]

I went with Smarty 'cos its on the 3 network, which has good coverage round me, and it's cheap (£18 a month).
I like the TP Link stuff because it's easy to set up and customise using the "Tether" app on your phone, rather than having to log onto the router IP page and remember all the passwords.

£18 for how much per month, and is it speed limited at all?

[wheelnut]

I use two types;

Teltonika - pretty good and pretty cheap. Can take an external antenna that you can put on your roof or outside wall if necessary - you can get these from https://www.3grouterstore.co.uk

DrayTek 2865lac - a lot more spendy but full of the normal DrayTek features and takes a SIM card directly.

FWIW, I think the teltonika and an external antenna would do the job well.

Also find out which network gives you the best speed before committing.

Be aware that some networks don’t support voip very well. I generally end up using 3/gamma.