Posted under Hardware & Knowledge Base & Networks & PC
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Tags Tip, Tutorial, Zen
I obtained an EE mobile router as backup for the occasions when my main FTTC internet goes down. The main internet went down recently for and extended period due to an OpenReach Fibre connection issue to the exchange.
EE have the best mobile data coverage for my area per the ofcom coverage site here.
Zen internet sent me an EE mobile router as backup during the above outage (I presume they knew that EE had the best coverage in my area).
I was able to readily plug the router into a PC and get mobile coverage.
However, doing this via my Fritzbox 7530 needed some tweaking. The fritzbox has mobile internet backup capability via a submenu on its internet menu. This allows enabling the mobile router (plugged in via its usb port) as a backup only when the main internet is down.
Initially when I tried this having unplugged the main DSL connection, the internet showed as up, but DNS translation did not work. I found that under the internet menu/Account Information/DNS Server settings, I had overridden the DNSV4 servers provided by the ISP with specific Zen ones. Once I returned this setting to “use DNSv4 servers assigned by the internet service provider (recommended)”, DNS then worked on the mobile connection. In addition, automatic failover to mobile worked correctly when I unplugged the DSL connection, although this did take a few minutes to stabilise and was not instant.
In practice, I planned not to leave the mobile router plugged in, but to connect when needed. However, the fact that it is capable of providing shared internet and wifi via the router to my whole network was a real plus.
I found that the EE mobile router performed particularly well from my garden office (which is of wooden construction). I obtained approx 50Mb down and 1 Mb up in this situation – the down link speed was actually better than my FTTC which is around 32Mb. However in the house via the Fritzbox 7530, this reduced to around 20Mb down, presumably due to the brick construction blocking the signal more than the wooden building did.
However, in both of these situations the mobile data rate was way better than I had previously obtained by tethering my Vodafone Mobile – in the latter case, the connection was very slow and intermittent – sometimes I could not get a connection at all, so it would have been no use as a backup for remote working. The EE mobile router was perfectly suited for use as a remote working backup, although I planned not to leave it plugged in permanently as a hot backup but to manually plug in when required, as it was not instant anyway, and in practice I may have to buy additional minutes from EE as they seem to expire if you don’t use them within a set period.
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