MikroTik wAP LTE kit and SXT LTE kit-US w/ 2600Hz T-Mobile LTE Data!

[Mark Diaz]

Hi 2600Hz Fans!

I would like to share with you all our experiences with the MikroTik wAP LTE kit and SXT LTE kit - Both the US versions. I have tested many others however we found these to be the best in class from a price and performance perspective.

Found below respectively

https://mikrotik.com/product/wap_ac_lte_kit

https://mikrotik.com/product/sxt_lte_kit

From a performance perspective, the features we liked :

LTE Category 4 (150Mbps Downlink, 50Mbps Uplink) LTE FDD bands 1 (2100MHz) / 2 (1900MHz) / 3 (1800MHz) / 7 (2600MHz) / 8 (900 MHz) / 20 (800MHz) LTE TDD bands 38 (2600MHz) / 40 (2300MHz)

Both are "weatherproof".. Which we can attest to in South Florida rain storms and such.

The wAP LTE has one ethernet and the SXT LTE has 2.

The wAP also can act a wifi AP suporting 802.11b/g/n

The SXT LTE can also support 2 micro SIMs

A huge plus for us is that they are PoE and can be installed outside of a building or even a window to get the best possible signal.

Getting up and going is as simple as adding the configuring an APN and applying to the mikrotik LTE config after popping in your active T-Mobile SIM:

Depending on weather and other usual signal impediments, we can usually avg 20Mbps up and down. As a test we connected a satellite office with ability to keep 10 SIP calls active with MOS scores over 4 consistently. Also streaming our video conferencing service with adequate bandwidth stability to keep a good conversion live for several hours.

Clearly, these do not have the simplicity of the The NETGEAR LTE Modem 2120. They require you have firewall basic knowledge to configure a port on whatever firewall you're using to act as a fail over. However these days I believe that's pretty standard in basic configurations. But once you have that, it simply acts as another provider link. You could even plug this directly into your laptop, get an IP and start using data. It also has tons of functionality, such as custom scripting (for notifications via email, SMS, api. whatever). And the price is very competitive. I grab ours off Amazon or Streakwave.

Hope this helps anyone interested in deploying 2600Hz SIMs with their new T-Mobile partnership! It's absolutely a great fail over solution and look forward to deploying more into production in the future.  Happy to answer any questions anyone may have. Long live KAZOO!

[Karl Stallknecht]

Awesome write up, thanks! But that still leaves me wondering, what is the advantage of using this over the Netgear modem? We use the Netgear ones and if there is a better solution we would be interested, but so far we haven't had a need for something else since we have no issues with the Netgear ones.

 

Also, out of curiosity where are you getting your SIMs from?

[esoare]

3 minutes ago, Karl Stallknecht said:

Awesome write up, thanks! But that still leaves me wondering, what is the advantage of using this over the Netgear modem? We use the Netgear ones and if there is a better solution we would be interested, but so far we haven't had a need for something else since we have no issues with the Netgear ones.

 

Also, out of curiosity where are you getting your SIMs from?

@Karl Stallknecht What comes to mind is reserved bandwith for Voice. @Rick Guyton did some great scripts on that, and with either MAC address, or VLAN's you can reserve bandwidth for voice, and data won't hog your pipe. 

[Karl Stallknecht]

Just now, esoare said:

@Karl Stallknecht What comes to mind is reserved bandwith for Voice. @Rick Guyton did some great scripts on that, and with either MAC address, or VLAN's you can reserve bandwidth for voice, and data won't hog your pipe. 

Can't you just do that on your existing firewall though?

[esoare]

1 minute ago, Karl Stallknecht said:

Can't you just do that on your existing firewall though?

Not if I don't manage that. If a client is only VoIP (I know you MSP and such) then having a good SIP VoIP experience on the backup solution is essential in my opinion. Just my 2cents into this. 

 

[Karl Stallknecht]

Just now, esoare said:

Not if I don't manage that. If a client is only VoIP (I know you MSP and such) then having a good SIP VoIP experience on the backup solution is essential in my opinion. Just my 2cents into this. 

 

Ahh I see what you mean...good point. Personally we just say "sorry" now and that we need to be their MSP if they want help with their network, but I guess having a solution other than that would be handy.

[Mark Diaz]

15 hours ago, Karl Stallknecht said:

Awesome write up, thanks! But that still leaves me wondering, what is the advantage of using this over the Netgear modem? We use the Netgear ones and if there is a better solution we would be interested, but so far we haven't had a need for something else since we have no issues with the Netgear ones.

 

Also, out of curiosity where are you getting your SIMs from?

So the advantages for us are the separate network topology. Having a device inline to a users network isn't ideal for a business (IMHO). Having the ability to place them anywhere physically for a better cell signal is a huge plus for us.  And because these are weather proof, we can even mount them outside for optimal signal. In addition, we can do virtually anything we want with it from a software perspective, like traffic shaping etc at the device level. Yes you can do it at the firewall level as well, but IMHO this allows you to compartmentalize the configs rather than bunch them into a single device. And finally, we've had a much better experience with the radios in these devices over the Netgear and others. Our previous tests provided us an up to 30% better signal overall when tested.

Sims: T-Mobile pretty much gives them away like candy on Halloween. You can just call and ask them or drop into a T-Mo store. They can hook you up.

[Karl Stallknecht]

8 hours ago, Mark Diaz said:

So the advantages for us are the separate network topology. Having a device inline to a users network isn't ideal for a business (IMHO). Having the ability to place them anywhere physically for a better cell signal is a huge plus for us.  And because these are weather proof, we can even mount them outside for optimal signal. In addition, we can do virtually anything we want with it from a software perspective, like traffic shaping etc at the device level. Yes you can do it at the firewall level as well, but IMHO this allows you to compartmentalize the configs rather than bunch them into a single device. And finally, we've had a much better experience with the radios in these devices over the Netgear and others. Our previous tests provided us an up to 30% better signal overall when tested.

Sims: T-Mobile pretty much gives them away like candy on Halloween. You can just call and ask them or drop into a T-Mo store. They can hook you up.

Thanks for the info! The weather-proof thing is huge...that could be really helpful. Also interesting to hear that the signal was better. Are you using external antennas on the Netgear units though? (since they don't come with them)

 

Weird about the SIMs. Even though we have an account with them, they've tried to bill us at the store sometimes and we have to argue and then they insist they won't give them to us without activating them on a phone in the store. Maybe we'll try a different store LOL.

[Mark Diaz]

On 10/10/2019 at 7:11 PM, Karl Stallknecht said:

Are you using external antennas on the Netgear units though?

Nope I didn't try that. :D