Community Forums

CSX4350 · 12-19-2008, 09:56 PM

I have two aircards, an AT&T 881 USB and a Verizon 727 USB, I use which ever gets the best data throughput depending on where I am. I am wanting to go to a Cradlepoint wifi router in my coach, money is not a big object. I want several things, range and the ability to hook a printer to the router so either laptop can print on it are two things. Quality (something that will last), ease of setup and the ability to set a simple password lock to prevent someone from sucking up my limited monthly bandwidth. It has to be able to work with both modems alternately.

To you Cradlepoint gurus out there, which model best suits my needs?

TIA

CSX4350 · 12-19-2008, 09:56 PM

I have two aircards, an AT&T 881 USB and a Verizon 727 USB, I use which ever gets the best data throughput depending on where I am. I am wanting to go to a Cradlepoint wifi router in my coach, money is not a big object. I want several things, range and the ability to hook a printer to the router so either laptop can print on it are two things. Quality (something that will last), ease of setup and the ability to set a simple password lock to prevent someone from sucking up my limited monthly bandwidth. It has to be able to work with both modems alternately.

To you Cradlepoint gurus out there, which model best suits my needs?

TIA

JavaJelly · 12-20-2008, 02:36 AM

I love my Cradlepoint MBR1000. I highly recommend it.

Great range. It has one of the best ranges out there w/o a repeater.

Will take two air cards (different types though) and load balance. Load balancing will automatically use the highest throughput source. (as a side note, it doesn't take contention into account in load balancing)

Supports up to wireless n and almost all security protocols. You can customize access to your liking. (e.g. open vs. secure. Password protected or not) Still pretty small too. Reboots in only 35 seconds.

I move mine between the house and coach. We have satellite internet at the house so having it go between satellite and aircard can be helpful during outages.

AlexSian · 12-20-2008, 05:01 AM

I will second Scott's recommendation of the MBR1000.

however, in all my testing i have never found load balancing feature to automatically select the highest throughput... it simply spreads load across multiple active connections.

JavaJelly · 12-20-2008, 05:27 AM

I will defer to EVDOAlex on how the load balancing works. Being a semi-techie, the marketing and manuals seem to infer that it will select the highest bandwidth but, not necessarily the source w/the least contention (ping speed and delay)

Being remote and in an area w/weather that can cause satellite signal interruption many times in a year, I am most interested in the reliability of it automatically switching to the other source when needed.

Techie · 12-20-2008, 07:14 AM

We have two MBR1000's (one for hte rig & one for the home) with 2 USb modems (Verizon, 720 & 727).

They work so well with the load balancing that we got rid of our Wildblue sat at the house which is why we have the 2nd MBR1000.

THe load balancing will split across all of the connections; I think that the limitation is that the maximum speed will be that of the slowest connection.

Also, you will get the signal strength (bars & in db) for each modem via a web browser interface and it operates as a 4 port router as well.

To use a shared printer you will need to have a network ready printer or will need a network adapter of some sort for your printer.

CSX4350 · 01-03-2009, 03:22 PM

Many thanks to those who responded, my MBR1000 arrived and is perfect. I was able to set up a non network printer on the primary computer and workgroup everything to be able to use that one printer on either laptop.
Now for my current question, if I plug both the aircard and modem in I see them both on the modem page of the router login, but it doesn't let me choose which one to connect with. I only see the one that is connected on the main connection page (where I can disconnect from). It shows me signal strength on both, but doesn't seem to show if I am getting Rev. A or 3G with the different cards. Is there a way to tell or do I need to connect them to the laptop, check out the signals, then connect with whichever has the best service?

TIA