Provide temporary Internet to an office through 4G LTE hotspot?

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jmroberts70

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I've got an office that has spotty Internet. It is due for an upgrade that will take about 2 months. There is no other ISP in the area that can give me anything to help back up the connection in the mean time. What I am considering is to buy a 4G LTE hot spot, set it next to a WiFi-to-Ethernet adapter, hook that to a load balancer, and use it to help boost the connection to the office. However, I know these hot spots usually have a 10 user limit. My guess is that it should only see 1 WiFi user (the adapter) and call it good but maybe it also does more checking than that. Is this a good idea?
 
Wireless ISPs often have a wireless to USB adapter which will mate to a wireless bridge which will then feed to your router via ethernet. The hotspot device you're referring to has no ethernet capabilities and users can only connect up to it via wifi. Those usually have a 5-15 user limit on them.
 
This is what I'm thinking of running:
4gnetwork01.jpg


There would be just 1 wireless connection (that being the bridge connector). After that, everything would run wired.
 
Sonicwalls have the option to have a 4G connection via the USB Port.
 
Mikrotik routeros can usb tether with an android phone. It also supports many 3g and 4g modems.

Your idea with a hotspot (as well as thethering with a phone) will result in router behind router. It shouldn't be an issue if you are just doing surfing but vpn may be affected. The only way to get a public ip is if your main routing device directly supports a usb modem.
 
If you're using the Peplink router in the picture, from their website they claim you can use a USB 4G/3G modem in the router. No need for the Hotspot, unless your Comm closet gets no bars or something.
 
My company used to use something like this for our guest internet. It is extremely slow but does work. Fair warning with data limits though.
 
Do yourself a favor and skip the Verizon hotspots which are flaky and either go with a 4G USB modem like the Pantech UML295 or if you want the very best 24/7 performance then get a router that has an integrated LTE modem. Peplink has a Balance 30 LTE if you don't already have the Balance 20 you showed in your diagram. You could also get one of the Cradlepoint COR routers and connect it via Ethernet to whatever router you want to use.
 
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For backup internet connection I've got a Note 3 with unlimited Verizon data hotspot bridging wirelessly to a Linksys WRT54G/GS running OpenWRT Backwire 10.03.1 providing connectivity to wired devices and uplinked via wire to another OpenWRT WRT54G/GS servicing wireless clients. Works well, is reliable and new/2nd hand WRT54G/GS are cheap ~$20-30. OpenWRT Backwire 10.03.1 was the only one at the time with working wireless bridging for my setup. You can probably substitute the Note 3 hotspot with another phone or MIFI.
 
If you have more than 5 users it probably won't work. We tried this at our company and had issues with more than 5 users. We used the Verizon jetpack connected to a laptop via USB. I used windows to share the USB connection with the LAN port, then plugged the WAN on our pfsense box into the LAN on the laptop to share the connection. This worked until more than 5 users connected, then existing users would just spin. They were using very little bandwidth, so it wasn't maxing out the device either. We tested this and it worked until more than 5 users tried to browse, then it would crap out.
 
Biznatch said:
If you have more than 5 users it probably won't work. We tried this at our company and had issues with more than 5 users. We used the Verizon jetpack connected to a laptop via USB. I used windows to share the USB connection with the LAN port, then plugged the WAN on our pfsense box into the LAN on the laptop to share the connection. This worked until more than 5 users connected, then existing users would just spin. They were using very little bandwidth, so it wasn't maxing out the device either. We tested this and it worked until more than 5 users tried to browse, then it would crap out.
Click to expand...

You ran into the limitations of the Verizon Jetpacks which are not built to handle more than a handful of connections and aren't designed for business use. What the op needs is a USB 4G modem like the Pantech UML295 plugged into a business class router like one of the Peplink's which will allow him to do the load balancing with his other ISP's connection. And if he wants to invest the money on something built for 24/7 operation in a business environment then go with the integrated LTE solution in the Peplink Balance 30 LTE or a Peplink MAX BR1.

http://www.peplink.com/blog/meet-the-new-balance-30-lte-unparalleled-uptime-with-lte-backup/

http://www.peplink.com/products/max-cellular-router/pepwave-max-br-series/
 
Sounds like that MIFI has a built-in 5 device restriction on 3G and 10 device on 4G. With the method I'm using it's just PAT'ing and I've had 8 devices working simultaneously. Curious to bump it over 10 now.
 
Yikes I'd hate to see how expensive this would be. Imagine a gas pump that is continuously rolling. That's basically cellular data overcharges adding up as normal internet traffic takes place. :p
 
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