FAO RichardandRos

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.

TP Link Router

Poynting Aerial

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

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. 

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

 Interesting concept for ditching my expesive ISP via the landline. Worthy of a bit of experimentation I think.. Anyone tried it for TV e.g. Netflix and internet browsing?

peedee

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

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. 🤞

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

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.