FAO RichardandRos
Hi, awhile ago you mentioned on a post that you had purchased a TP Link Mobile wifi router.
We are looking for a new one and wondered if now you have had it awhile, are you still happy with it and could you give a bit more info on which model you got please.
OH has looked them up and there seems to be several types.
Many thanks, hope you see this.
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TG - Good job you drew my attention to this post - I hadn't seen it!
The reason I went for this particular router is that it has two aerials - which can be unscrewed to permit the Poynting aerial to be plugged in. Bear in mind I have only had it for two months so it's only been tested on two sites so far. One was the C&CC site at Charmouth and the other was this club's NYM site. I have an EE sim card although the router is unlocked so any network can be used but experience has taught me that EE works well in most areas. Both the sites have poor 4g reception and, indeed, there are reviews re Charmouth pointing out how bad EE reception is and this was borne out by our phones. I was getting acceptable performance from the router alone at Charmouth but when I plugged the aerial in the transformation was dramatic. I was getting a consistent 35 Mbps download speed - occasionally getting up to 50 Megs and higher. I had a similar experience at Whitby although not quite so dramatic. It's the external aerial which seems to make the difference. I have a 10' mast which attaches to the A-frame with a standard aerial bracket and I simply put the leads through the window set to 'fresh air' so as not to trap the cable. Although this isn't probably as neat as a permanent fixture like the Avtex aerial, it avoids drilling any holes in the van and I have a suspicion from something someone who has the Avtex said to me, that the Poynting works better.
Hope this helps but if there's anything else I can tell you, just ask.
We're off to a CS near Malton next week - and the Malton area is rubbish for 4g signals, so I will be interested to see how it performs there.
Just one final thought - there are 5g ready routers out there - but I didn't bother since the chances of there being 5g where we go are about as likely as me getting an audience with the Pope (or my GP!) "Levelling up", I suspect will take a long time to materialise in this part of the world
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Many thanks for all the information, much appreciated. I've passed it onto OH who will look into it, he understands this more than I do.
Sorry I couldn't respond yesterday but someone had closed the thread before I got the chance. I reported it last night and asked for it to be reopened.
Thank you to the person who reopened it and once again thank you R&R for taking the time to give me feed back enjoy your trip to the Malton area.
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Morning
As our wifi hotspot is pretty cold we have a tp link router from the club with an ee sim to use during training for the new booking system. It works really well just on it's own two aerials. In actual fact it's quicker than the works computer!!
I'm going to purchase one for when we close down, it's a good piece of kit for a non tech me
JK
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PD - it works fine for all catch-up TV channels at least it did at NYM where the terrestrial TV signal is a bit 'variable'. I'm using an Avtex TV and Firestick to turn it into a 'smart' one. I've also thought about ditching my landline / broadband at home because the 4g route gives much faster download speeds, Whether I will actually bite the bullet remains to be seen because the difference is I'm on unlimited usage at home whereas the Mifi system is PAYG so I'm not sure how the costs would compare.
The success of this particular router seems to have something to do with LTE technology - I did google it but not sure I fully understood all the technicalities
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Good to hear it works fine just with its own aerial.
We are thinking of it for Spain/Portugal this coming winter, so gathering as much info as we can before buying.
We currently have a Mifi which we can use an extended aerial, it's on a magnetic base so just sits on top of the PVC works fine for just normal stuff but only 150mbps compared to 300mbps of the TP so hopefully good enough for streaming 🤔
Our village has a terrible mobile signal so we have to have a land-line and broadband if this works good enough we might be able to do away with that. 🤞
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In my view it is worth buying just the TP-Link to try it at home. If it works satisfactory it will have paid for itself in a couple of months at the price I am paying Virgin who keep on putting the price up and up while offering discounts to new customers. They get my back up because of this and I have been looking for alternatives without using a landline. I have an old TP-Link router but haven't used it since roaming originall became free. It doesn't have external aerial capability. Food for thought in the Autumn when I have more time on my hands
peedee
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I checked out the link and some details are out of date, is it still possible to attach an aerial? Apologies if I've got that wrong.
As we're all heading for the cessation of landlines and going digital we are waiting to see what telecoms in general come up with.
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The rate of cessation of landlines is dependent on a number of factors...
Locally, we've all had Truspeed teams digging up our pavements to run fibre close to everyone's house, but this is a vast national project and will take time.
whilst we may retain 'telephone numbers' going forward, it's not going to be an easy job convincing many older folk that using the equivalent of Whatsapp (VOIP voice over internet protocol) is the same as 'the dog and bone'.
many older folk use proprietary software like FaceTime without a care, and their phones may switch to VOIP in poor reception areas, but also without any understanding of how it works.
Not necessary as a user but when someone tells you your going to lose your landline the comprehension, and therefore the confidence, might not be there.
As Brue says, we don't know what we'll be offered...we now have fibre just outside the front door and, AFAK, I'm paying for a Fibre (to the cabinet) system. Will my provider just come along and connect us up as that's what most think they're getting?
otherwise, it's a bit of a waste of time if folk are going to balk at a connection charge and a contract price rise for a system that (let's face it) most don't need.
back to routers etc...I have a small Vodafone HUAWEI mifi which has no aerial connections (a cheap suck it and see solution) and in almost every area, I've been able to get sufficient speeds to use the Firestick and to download Sky programs along with internet browsing for two iPads.
with the assumption that coverage and power/speed will only get better, I'm happy to give it a bit longer before going for anything different.
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YT when you say you use your Mifi alongside a firestick is that in the UK or away in Spain.
I'm on Smarty for my phone and OH is with Lebara, the Mifi is unlocked so on a payg. We found last year that we didn't really have the speed to stream TV.
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OH just tried our mifi in the house with the aerial popped out the window. He connected to the iplayer no problem a bit of pixalating but watchable, his thoughts are a fast speed mifi should do the job. Without the mifi mobile signal wasn't even strong enough to connect to iplayer it just kept buffering.
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TG it's anywhere. So far we've not had an issue anywhere that comes to mind. The mifi has a sort of traffic light indicator...green for a decent signal, amber middling and red no good.
probably had red once and amber a couple of times but generally the signal with Vodafone seems pretty good. The mifi was about £40 and I have a 2nd sim loaded which was dirt cheap, £10 a month for 100gb incl roaming. 25gb cap overseas, but another 25gb in my phone if that's a problem.
what network PAYG is in the mifi? Was this abroad? Perhaps some reduce speeds in some areas?
Can you try the mifi in other parts of the uk at some point.
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Cheers, it's a 3 data sim 24gb. Live for 24 mths after initiating.
Used it last year in Spain and again in Lanzarote this year.
Tried in the UK to when away recently and previously and works fine. Until today we hadn't tried it for TV streaming. Might be better if the signal were stronger🤔
We are pretty much sorted as you know for TV in Spain 😉 but we are thinking of the future, we may be going East in the springtime and not sure if we will get coverage.
Plus as I mentioned at home we would like to get rid of the land-line and broadband. Wouldn't mind the cost if we were here 24/7 but we are not, I dislike paying for something I'm not getting full use of.
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Not sure which link brue - and which details are out of date. I accept that there is a newer version of the aerial but I thought I'd stick with the one that had a lot of good reviews. As long as the lead from the aerial has two leads, it will replace the built in aerials on the router.
As far as losing your landline is concerned - we have fibre cable to right outside the house and it would be a quick connection to bring it right to the house - and I'm told it would actually be cheaper to have full fibre rather than what I have at the moment (the landline goes). What's putting me off is that a friend of Ros's has just gone down this route and her phone connection (Voip presumably) is dreadful - distorted and cutting off every few minutes.
The whole of our small town now has fibre to the doorstep but judging by the number of Openreach vans you now see around, the take-up seems to be minimal.
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Richardandros said
As far as losing your landline is concerned - we have fibre cable to right outside the house and it would be a quick connection to bring it right to the house - and I'm told it would actually be cheaper to have full fibre rather than what I have at the moment (the landline goes). What's putting me off is that a friend of Ros's has just gone down this route and her phone connection (Voip presumably) is dreadful - distorted and cutting off every few minutes.
The whole of our small town now has fibre to the doorstep but judging by the number of Openreach vans you now see around, the take-up seems to be minimal.
We are in the same position except for a while we actually did run the high speed fibre alongside our much slower fibre to cabinet. Initially they couldn't port our landline across to the fibre network but that is possible now. However I came to the conclusion that having fibre, in reality didn't provide us with much of an advantage. We don't do a lot of streaming so I gave up the fibre and stuck with the FTTC. It was important for us to keep our (cherished) phone number. Also Margaret's hearing is not so good and she finds using the telephone difficult at times so if there are problems associated with VOIP I am glad we did. (I appreciate its coming anyway) If anyone else is in the same position with their hearing be very cautious with buying phones for the hard of hearing and if you do buy them on a sale or return basis if that is possible. We find our standard Panasonic wireless phones far superior. With the availability of fibre to the house I think so many have changed over that hardly anyone is using FTTP so we get a pretty consistent 35 mbps download which is fine for what we need. Obviously things are changing and we may not have that option in the future?
David
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We also much, much prefer to keep our landline (as long as we can). OH is also a bit on the deaf side (he disputes but he is!) and he can only hear clearly on the landline, in fact if anyone calls his mobile he will ask them to call back on the landline number - our Doctors are the worst for this whatever we ask them to use! We have fibre to the cabinet which is somewhere near us but nothing (as yet) in our street. Not totally sure we understand all this technology either just yet.
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I bought a TP-Link WiFi router model number TL6400 and hooked it up to run my home network using a Three Mobile pay as you go sim. It works a treat even without the external aerial. I am getting between 10 to 12 Mbs download and 5 to 8 Mbs upload speeds. I am going to run it for a while to make sure there are no problems with internet TV and Voip but it is certainly good enough for quite quick browsing of the internet and email.
peedee
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Been a while since I commented on this thread - but by way of an update - we are currently on a CL near Flamborough ( East Yorkshire, for you lot ‘darn sowf’!) Not one of the most densely populated areas of the country! With my set-up I am getting a peak of 85 Mbps download and a staggering 75 Mbps upload. 4 times faster than my fixed system at home. Admittedly, this is at 5 am, but even during the day it never falls below 50/30. Using Ookla to check speed.
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That is pretty good RAR, cannot see mine reaching those dizy heights at home. With no external aerial,. speed is 10 times less than my broadband download but only half down on upload. Voip works fine, tested it out with an over the water call. Just TV internet to check out this evening.
peedee.
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Peedee - the speeds you are getting are about the same as I had when I first set it up here - then I turned the aerial through 90 degrees - and bingo - I got the speeds I've described. I wonder if you fiddle about with the positioning of the attached aerials, things might be improved? I'll do a check with the external aerial disconnected in the morning and see just what difference that aerial is making but from past experience (so far) it seems to be significant - especially as our van is aluminium clad and that will undoubtedly be having an effect.
I bought a 120Gb EE data sim just after Christmas - for £50 and I've still got 30+ Gb left so pound/gigabyte, it's cheap internet - especially as it's in use for at least one week per month and more often recently, for two. The only thing that's stopping me ditching the EE broadband at home is that with that and all the other EE contracts I have, I do get quite a lot of add-ons/discounts.
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Thanks for the info RAR, I was wondering what sim you were using. I bought a 3 mobile Pay as you go which gives me 16Gbs for a tenner valid for a month. This was just to see how it works. I watched catch up TV using it yesterday evening and it worked perfectly. I don't think I will use all of that in a month (depends on how much internet TV we watch) but I am going to keep it running until the end of the period and take it from there. If it works out ok I can save myself £50 a month if I ditched Virgin totally.
peedee
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Peedee - as promised, I ran the comparison test this morning. The external aerial does make quite a significant difference although performance is still acceptable with the 'internal' aerials. Without is 39/3.5 and With is 75/26 Mbps. I did attach the Oookla screenshots but then Deleted User them because they show my IP address which I thought wouldn't be a sensible idea to publish on a public website!
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FYI 3 Mobile are offering home broadband, 4G or 5G, unlimited data for £10 a month for the first 6 months and £20 per month thereafter.
https://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband
peedee
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