TP Link TL-MR3420 - your experience ? any tips ?

long_b

Bought one of these the other day to help me investigate if mobile might be a viable option for my net needs.

It's working fine, WiFi, LAN etc, all seems to be configured OK but I'm not convinced it's giving me all it's got ....

Seems to me from testing that it's consistently giving me lower download speeds than either
(a) using the dongle directly on my netbook or
(b) using an iPhone.

We've got data plans on two Meteor and one eMobile SIM cards - that lets me test like against like network wise.

Here's an example - iPhone speedtests via wifi from the TP Link (eMobile) vs raw 3G (Meteor). All readings taken from the exact same location within seconds

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9394702/photo.PNG



So here's what I'm wondering - do people usually get better speeds using a dongle raw or via one of these routers ? Have updated the FW already - are there any other options I should be changing ?

edit I'm using a Huawei E1550 stick

long_b

OK - I live in a marginal signal area.
The solution I found was to
(1) Disable WiFi on the router - I'm that was draining some juice that may have been needed elsewhere on the router
(2) Attach the USB dongle via a short USB extension lead, a firm one that allows the dongle to be positioned directly up

With these two together I'm getting very close to the speeds I was seeing on the handset.

Just posted in case it helps someone.

slowlydownwards

Had no luck with it myself, wouldn't recognize my modem even though it was meant to be officially supported.

There is an OpenWrt port for this router. Careful though, not sure if 3G is supported "out of the box" with this alternative firmware.

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3420