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Garyt
@myvzw.com

Garyt

Anon

MBR95 Range

I am about to switch over to the 4620. I currently have the MBR1000 and I will need the wifi as WAN Router option because of the limited range the 4620 has. I have a 2 story house and from what I have read the 4620 range is 33 feet.

I saw that the MBR95 has a range of 600 feet and my old MBR1000 has a range of 750 feet. I am worried that with my house being 2 floors the reduced range of the MBR95 and it not having any external antennas may cause issues.

Any thoughts on if the MBR95 would be ok? Or is there another router I could purchase?
davidhoffman
Premium Member
join:2009-11-19
Warner Robins, GA

davidhoffman

Premium Member

I swapped a MBR1000 to a MBR95 in a 2 story house. It works well. You just need to leave the transmit power all the way up.
Jim_in_VA (banned)
join:2004-07-11
Cobbs Creek, VA

Jim_in_VA (banned) to Garyt

Member

to Garyt
you can also get a powerline adapter kit and use that MBR1000 on the second floor to give complete coverage:

4620>MBR95>powerline adapter>MBR1000
stenman
join:2007-03-07
Salinas, CA

stenman to Garyt

Member

to Garyt
If you can do so try to avoid having to use the WiFi as WAN of a router like the MPR95. We had this router and the WiFi as WAN connection to the Novatel 4620LE would be disrupted multiple times in an hour and we would have to shut off the Cradlepoint for a couple minutes and then reboot it to get an internet connection - shows up a bounce error on the browser.

We replaced the Cradlepoint 95 with their enterprise class MBR 1400 router that also provides Wifi as WAN and it has proven to be no better in this regard. A new firmware release on Feb 25, 2013 was to patch this area but we have not seen the connection problem fixed completely. Any downloads of data will still break the connection between the Cradlepoint router and the 4620LE mifi hotspot.

It may be better in a year or two or it may not be truly fixable and simply be an overextended technology. I can safely guarantee that the engineers at Cradlepoint are not talking to the engineers at Novatel or at Verizon to resolve these problems. Wifi as WAN is very much bleeding edge technology. If you can avoid using it you will be better off for doing so.

We need a router for connecting to printers and network storage devices but are having to think about hard wiring the house for Ethernet or using a sneaker net for printing and file backup and having all our computers connect directly to the 4620LE to access the internet.

It feels very much like the personal computer universe circa 1985 where the end users had to do the systems integration to get everything to work together.