This 5G device is a piece of ****. It is my first time using 5G for broadband so not sure what the benchmark is in the market.
- It doesn't allow for multiword long wifi passwords as it forces you to add numbers and special characters. Meaning I have to reconfigure all my smart devices or just use another device for wifi.
- It hangs in router mode even when you explicitely enable bridge mode, it still gives a local IP address to my router. The only way I found to make this work is to reset the router and switch to bridge mode before plugging any device to the ethernet port. If you plug a device to ethernet while in router mode it will never switch back to bridge mode correctly unless you reset it.
- And finally the routing performance is abysmal. Running iperf3 from a laptop connected to wifi to a server connected to LAN on the MC888, I get max speeds of 200 maybe 300 Mbits/s. Running in bridge mode (double NAT that is because the stupid MC888 doesn't switch to bridge correctly) and using a mini intel pc as router, and a cheap Tenda AX3000 repeater as wifi AP, I saturate the 1Gbit ethernet link of the repeater when running Iperf3.
So much hype yet falls short to do what a basic router is supposed to do. I have seen speeds up to 400 Mbit/s download, but during the day hovering mostly around 80 to 100. Upload speed is problematic, never above 20. Not sure whether it is Smarty throttling or something else.