Cradlepoint CTR500 Router WiFi Mobile Hotspot 3G/4G

[davismills]

A product review to help fellow RVers.

This is a great little traveling 3G/4G router. I don't have an air card, but it worked well with my TMobile 3G Touch phone. The range is a little shy without an external antenna. Without the antenna, I had a significant drop outside of 40 feet. I don't consider this a bad thing, as most hotel rooms are much smaller anyway and you can always purchase an external antenna. My plan for the router is use inside/outside my 35 foot motor home when traveling and as a failover solution should my primary ISP experience problems. The setup is easy as you just hook your laptop directly to the router, after a change of IP address on your laptop..of course. My home router (wireless) IP address conflicted so I had to change the default address on the Cradlepoint. Now I have a primary router address of 192.168.1.1, guest access wireless VLAN of 192.168.2.1 and the CradlePoint is at 192.168.3.1. You could also jump to a Class B address of 172.16.0.1 as well. Once I had the Cradlepoint configured, I set my laptop back to DHCP (acquire address automatically in Microsoft speak) to garner an address from the Cradlepoint wirelessly and I was quickly connected to the Internet utilizing my TMobile 3G Touch phone. I bought the router via Ebay and it was refurbished. Price was $50.00. New ones are more like $100 plus. Bottomline...sweet!

Link to Ebay site:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...d=718169158001

New one at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Cradlepoint-CR...5307156&sr=1-1

[Bremer Speck]

I do need my daily fix of email, internet and surfing and when I went to AZ to pick-up our coach to drive him (Vinny Ventana) back to Boston a couple of months ago, I researched my options and came-up with the Cradlepoint MBR95 4G router and a 4G AT&T Broadband USB modem stick. This set-up served as an access point for total of 2 laptop and 2 iPad during the 2900 miles trip and it worked quite well. For most part of the trip, we did have a Broadband connection. For a short part of the trip, speeds dropped below.

[lastminute]

Thanks for the review!

Very helpful.