Another member of the "left behind" club here - 3Mbit down, 0.5Mbit up ADSL with no sign of FTTC or Cable. What makes it even better is that I live in the heart of suburbia, and happen to be on the only street within some radius without FTTC or Cable options. Anyway... it happens.
My usage is around 200GB/month with my current bandwidth constraints, however 300GB/month is probably more realistic without such constraints. I've previously looked into 4G, but the 20-40GB usage caps made this a non-starter. EE's 100GB tariff changes things a bit though.
I've been pondering a few different options, all based on multi-WAN policy based routing...
- Dual WAN: EE 100GB and ADSL. Use the EE where it counts (interactive use, streaming on main TV, work), the ADSL where I don't care or it doesn't matter (secondary TVs, system updates, large downloads, digital purchases etc)
- 3/4x WAN: round robin across 3x EE 100GB - significantly cheaper than topping up a single 100GB to the same cap, added benefit of greater theoretical bandwidth. Perhaps retain the ADSL for backup.
- Multi-WAN: Pick and choose providers - a possibility occurred that it may make sense to hit a Three all-you-can-eat tariff first until it gets capped or throttled, then fail over to the EE+ADSL approach.
All of which raise different questions:
1) Is EE's 100GB a full-on unmanaged 100GB so long as you're under the cap? I.e. it's not actually ~3GB/day, or shaped during certain times, or for certain types of traffic?
2) Is using Three's AYCE phone tariff in this manner even worth bothering with? There's a 30GB cap for tethering stated, but the internet is awash with comments suggesting there are users doing TBs/month, and only getting throttled during peak hours, which is why option 3 above seemed feasible. If I'm just going to get to 30GB in a period and then get cut off it's more cost effective to use another EE tariff though. I'm not interested in actively avoiding them detecting that it's multiple devices using it, but if they still don't bother doing much about it, then it's worth trying out on a 30-day rolling contract I would have thought.
3) There are lots of 3x WAN hardware options out there that use 2x Ethernet + 1x USB 4G, fewer if I was looking for 3+ Ethernet WAN port though - how much is a USB dongle going to limit me speed wise, bearing in mind that it will be on the ground floor behind a block wall (and a the top of a fairly noisy RF-wise comms rack), whereas an ethernet based device can be in the loft? Anything over 10Mbit would satisfy me in all honesty, but more is always better.
Any morsels of wisdom would be much appreciated!
My usage is around 200GB/month with my current bandwidth constraints, however 300GB/month is probably more realistic without such constraints. I've previously looked into 4G, but the 20-40GB usage caps made this a non-starter. EE's 100GB tariff changes things a bit though.
I've been pondering a few different options, all based on multi-WAN policy based routing...
- Dual WAN: EE 100GB and ADSL. Use the EE where it counts (interactive use, streaming on main TV, work), the ADSL where I don't care or it doesn't matter (secondary TVs, system updates, large downloads, digital purchases etc)
- 3/4x WAN: round robin across 3x EE 100GB - significantly cheaper than topping up a single 100GB to the same cap, added benefit of greater theoretical bandwidth. Perhaps retain the ADSL for backup.
- Multi-WAN: Pick and choose providers - a possibility occurred that it may make sense to hit a Three all-you-can-eat tariff first until it gets capped or throttled, then fail over to the EE+ADSL approach.
All of which raise different questions:
1) Is EE's 100GB a full-on unmanaged 100GB so long as you're under the cap? I.e. it's not actually ~3GB/day, or shaped during certain times, or for certain types of traffic?
2) Is using Three's AYCE phone tariff in this manner even worth bothering with? There's a 30GB cap for tethering stated, but the internet is awash with comments suggesting there are users doing TBs/month, and only getting throttled during peak hours, which is why option 3 above seemed feasible. If I'm just going to get to 30GB in a period and then get cut off it's more cost effective to use another EE tariff though. I'm not interested in actively avoiding them detecting that it's multiple devices using it, but if they still don't bother doing much about it, then it's worth trying out on a 30-day rolling contract I would have thought.
3) There are lots of 3x WAN hardware options out there that use 2x Ethernet + 1x USB 4G, fewer if I was looking for 3+ Ethernet WAN port though - how much is a USB dongle going to limit me speed wise, bearing in mind that it will be on the ground floor behind a block wall (and a the top of a fairly noisy RF-wise comms rack), whereas an ethernet based device can be in the loft? Anything over 10Mbit would satisfy me in all honesty, but more is always better.
Any morsels of wisdom would be much appreciated!