wkearney99
Guru
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2018
- Messages
- 2,189
- Location
- USA
- Vessel Name
- Solstice
- Vessel Make
- Grand Banks 47 Eastbay FB
I've bought a Peplink MBR Pro 5G for the boat and am delighted to report it's worked quite well, right out of the box.
Not the cheapest solution, but over the years I've learned "buy once, cry once".
For now I've got it using the 'paddle' style antennas that come with it. It supports using external antennas. Understanding that you need separate antennas for cellular and wifi. My limited initial testing around the Chesapeake has gotten excellent signal and throughput using just the paddles. It's not even installed up where it'd probably get better signals. Right now it's just sitting on a flat area ahead of the lower helm station.
It has one 5G-capable cellular radio and can accept 2 phone SIM cards. It's able to switch between the SIMs. There's a variety of options on how it'll switch but right now I've got it set to use a T-Mobile SIM for up to 100GB of bandwidth per month and then switch over to a Verizon SIM. With some added testing I'll decide if I want to keep the T-Mobile plan (which was cheaper/faster than the VZW plan was when I got it).
I already had a reliably working WiFi setup onboard using Ubiquiti access points, so I've kept that. The MBR can do this but I've learned to break things one step at a time, and will revisit on-board Wifi through it once I get the MBR installed in the flybridge. WiFi signal penetration on the boat was rather iffy with most gear before I went with the Ubiquiti devices.
I have the MBR configured to use on-shore WiFi as a WAN source, in addition to cellular. This to allow using marina WiFi when available instead of using cellular for everything. I have not delved too deeply into what it takes to toggle WAN wifi/cellular but there are a number of setup options to handle it automatically.
I have Peplink's FusionHub software running on a virtual machine back at the home office. This lets me have a virtual private network running between the boat/office. Which is handy for getting access to everything regardless of location. It was surprisingly painless to get it set up. Granted, I have decades of networking experience, so it's probably a little more difficult than most might want to tackle. But it was a lot less trouble than I expected (and having done multi-site IPsec VPNs... I know how troublesome this sort of thing can be).
There are ways to configure it to force certain kinds of traffic over certain links but I haven't wandered into that territory yet. For things like two-way video conferencing it's usually 'better' to use as direct a connection as possible, not through various VPN tunnels or encryption. It wouldn't make sense to have a zoom session on a laptop run out through an encrypted VPN back to the home office. Nor would it make sense to have the wife's work laptop have it's traffic double-encrypted by their VPN client and then again by the Peplink. I'd likely have them set up to use the MBR's active WAN and not use any VPN at all.
Do I "need" this? No, of course not. But I wanted reliable connectivity that didn't require me to put on my network admin hat every time someone onboard wants to watch a movie via streaming services. I've 'made it work' with a hodge-podge of other solutions in the past. But this has made it a LOT less trouble. Money well spent, thus far.
Not the cheapest solution, but over the years I've learned "buy once, cry once".
For now I've got it using the 'paddle' style antennas that come with it. It supports using external antennas. Understanding that you need separate antennas for cellular and wifi. My limited initial testing around the Chesapeake has gotten excellent signal and throughput using just the paddles. It's not even installed up where it'd probably get better signals. Right now it's just sitting on a flat area ahead of the lower helm station.
It has one 5G-capable cellular radio and can accept 2 phone SIM cards. It's able to switch between the SIMs. There's a variety of options on how it'll switch but right now I've got it set to use a T-Mobile SIM for up to 100GB of bandwidth per month and then switch over to a Verizon SIM. With some added testing I'll decide if I want to keep the T-Mobile plan (which was cheaper/faster than the VZW plan was when I got it).
I already had a reliably working WiFi setup onboard using Ubiquiti access points, so I've kept that. The MBR can do this but I've learned to break things one step at a time, and will revisit on-board Wifi through it once I get the MBR installed in the flybridge. WiFi signal penetration on the boat was rather iffy with most gear before I went with the Ubiquiti devices.
I have the MBR configured to use on-shore WiFi as a WAN source, in addition to cellular. This to allow using marina WiFi when available instead of using cellular for everything. I have not delved too deeply into what it takes to toggle WAN wifi/cellular but there are a number of setup options to handle it automatically.
I have Peplink's FusionHub software running on a virtual machine back at the home office. This lets me have a virtual private network running between the boat/office. Which is handy for getting access to everything regardless of location. It was surprisingly painless to get it set up. Granted, I have decades of networking experience, so it's probably a little more difficult than most might want to tackle. But it was a lot less trouble than I expected (and having done multi-site IPsec VPNs... I know how troublesome this sort of thing can be).
There are ways to configure it to force certain kinds of traffic over certain links but I haven't wandered into that territory yet. For things like two-way video conferencing it's usually 'better' to use as direct a connection as possible, not through various VPN tunnels or encryption. It wouldn't make sense to have a zoom session on a laptop run out through an encrypted VPN back to the home office. Nor would it make sense to have the wife's work laptop have it's traffic double-encrypted by their VPN client and then again by the Peplink. I'd likely have them set up to use the MBR's active WAN and not use any VPN at all.
Do I "need" this? No, of course not. But I wanted reliable connectivity that didn't require me to put on my network admin hat every time someone onboard wants to watch a movie via streaming services. I've 'made it work' with a hodge-podge of other solutions in the past. But this has made it a LOT less trouble. Money well spent, thus far.