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5G router roundup

dabigm

ULTIMATE Member
Those of you with 5G routers, which one are you using ? What do you think of it ? What are your speeds like and what network are you on ? (I have three, EE and Vodafone at home, all unlimited but alas only three and O2 currently have 5G here)

I really can't make up my mind if I should go for the Huawei CPE WIN external router, an Oppo 5G router that has 10G ethernet on it, or a mystery linksys 5G box that also has 10G. I do have 10G at home and each room has cat6A ethernet in it and I much prefer to use wired connections, only our phones and tablets use wifi.

Yes I know that none of the UK networks can go up to or over 1Gbit so 10G might be a bit pointless but I plan to keep it for a long time (My huawei E5172 has been serving us well in the attic for a good 7 years now) and who knows what the future might bring.

The Oppo-5G-CPE-Omni on paper looks like a great choice, very fast, 10G ethernet etc.. but it's an indoor one and it looks like it can't accept an antenna either which would be a plus.

My goal here is to obtain the best possible throughput, especially upload.

Finally any thoughts on Snapdragon vs Balong ? to me it looks on paper like the Balong is better/faster.

Thanks.
 
Not much choice. I'm hoping we'll be seeing more consumer products from the likes of Mikrotik, Nokia etc.
Got the CPE Win with EE, dl usually stays over 300 mbps (close to 500 in the morning), upload around 80-90 mbps all day. Very stable.
No experience with Snapdragon devices.
 
Lucian, does the CPE WIN support bridge mode ? And are you able to change bands etc on it ? Thanks! your speeds sound good. I can get 300/30 with my handset (Asus ROG phone 3)

oh and sorry where did you get it. ? I'm considering router-switch.com but they seem to be HK based so there's going to be import charges I guess
 
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Yes, it supports bridge mode and can change bands with HuaCtrl or ltehmonitor.
Got it from a1smartshop.com, but they run out.

Router-switch is a good source (usa i think?), but there will be taxes and delivery fees I expect. Other people on this forum bought from there successfully.
 
I've about a week ago just upgraded to 3's 5G Broadband as it was available in my area. I'm using the 5G CPE Pro and get stable 400Mbps down 80Mbps up.
 
FYI the CPE-WIN isn't really very futureproof - it doesn't support any of the bands that will be being used in the future for 5G - 700mhz after the Ofcom auction this year, 2100mhz as Vodafone are deploying DSS, and whatever the other providers decide to refarm over.

Also, while band locking is available on Huawei routers (through 3rd party apps) that only applies to 4G bands. If/when 5G stand-alone is used, this wont be much use. For non-stand-alone again, I'm not sure of the benefit, locking the band might cause the loss of 5G is the locked 4G anchor isn't flagged as EN-DC enabled.

Edit: the OPPO is almost the same, but it does have the inclusion of 2100Mhz for 5G (n1)
 
Those of you with 5G routers, which one are you using ? What do you think of it ? What are your speeds like and what network are you on ? (I have three, EE and Vodafone at home, all unlimited but alas only three and O2 currently have 5G here)

I really can't make up my mind if I should go for the Huawei CPE WIN external router, an Oppo 5G router that has 10G ethernet on it, or a mystery linksys 5G box that also has 10G. I do have 10G at home and each room has cat6A ethernet in it and I much prefer to use wired connections, only our phones and tablets use wifi.

Yes I know that none of the UK networks can go up to or over 1Gbit so 10G might be a bit pointless but I plan to keep it for a long time (My huawei E5172 has been serving us well in the attic for a good 7 years now) and who knows what the future might bring.

The Oppo-5G-CPE-Omni on paper looks like a great choice, very fast, 10G ethernet etc.. but it's an indoor one and it looks like it can't accept an antenna either which would be a plus.

My goal here is to obtain the best possible throughput, especially upload.

Finally any thoughts on Snapdragon vs Balong ? to me it looks on paper like the Balong is better/faster.

Thanks.
Hi dabigm,

I have the Huawei CPE Pro 2 and I'm on the 3 network.

Best router ive had so far for pulling in a signal, had about 4 various Huawei routers throughout the years, B525, B618, B818 and the original CPE Pro.

Speeds vary from 90-140. No 5G here so far, probably won't arrive for a long time yet either.

Love the router, no antenna socket if you want to tinker. I don't need external antenna luckily enough. I did try one with my CPE Pro but it just made things worse for me.

The CPE Pro 2 does have bridge mode though if that's of any interest to anyone.

It works perfectly with Hua-Ctrl too and here's my current figures.
 

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cool thanks everyone. still hard to make up my mind :)

re: the band locking stuff yeah that's mainly because I have a crappy old Huawei 4G router that insists on locking on to slower bands, when it is capable of working on the higher bandwidth ones, sadly stuff like Huactrl dont really work on it because it's truly ancient.

thanks for the opinions all.
 
FYI the CPE-WIN isn't really very futureproof - it doesn't support any of the bands that will be being used in the future for 5G - 700mhz after the Ofcom auction this year, 2100mhz as Vodafone are deploying DSS, and whatever the other providers decide to refarm over.
@GavinAshford Yes, that is true. I think it's still very early days for 5G routers, I suspect an "arms race" will follow with Ofcom (and other countries) releasing more spectrum, operators refarming 4G bands etc and hardware manufacturers catching up with all of that.

I guess a similar thing happened at the beginning of 4G.

The CPE Win can be ok, I mean it does support the "main" 3.5GHz band and also the upcoming 3.6-3.8GHz. In a decent location these should deliver plenty of capacity, I'm already getting well over 300Mbps on n77 alone.

Looking at the 700 MHz n28 band, while of course will be better penetrating, its available bandwidth is not actually all that great (relative), while the n77-79 bands can go up to 100MHz.
The n28 band will be for more basic services, IoT and other "low" speed purposes.
Whoever is after SPEED won't be bothered too much by its absence. :)
 
Oh yeah, I'm not saying it's useless - as you say it covers the 5G that is deployed in the UK today, but for future-proofing - if the OP was thinking 7 years down the line, as with their current setup, then it probably isn't ideal.

Relative is the word, but I wouldn't say it should be discarded on a whim and relegate it to 'basic' services. n28 with just 20mhz and 2 layers still has theoretical ~220Mbps downlink throughput... though obviously you'd expect low frequency bands to be deployed where it will travel far and cover a large area/population.

I'm not sure if any of the current routers aggregate 5G either, whereas future ones definitely will.
 
Agreed on all counts.
I don't see myself still using the CPE Win in 7 years time. I probably will have migrated to another device at the end of the current EE 24m contract. Let's see what the market will offer.
 
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From what I can see with the new firmware update in the CPE Win (10.0.5.1), LTEMonitor is showing 700 & 2100MHz as supported...

But yeah, like Lucian, it's an interim solution. I barely get 40mbps on FTTC despite being London and am allergic to Virgin.

But I have line of sight to the exchange which is bristling in masts and I get a pretty solid 300 on BT Mobile (which is EE). So it's a matter of 'does the job nicely' in the meantime... when they don't play silly buggers by turning off IPv4 even with CGNAT.
 
Can you send a screenshot of that? If you see 700mhz it doesn't necessarily mean it's the 5g band.
 
Do any of them support N28 at the moment (genuinely don't know, my research says no). I suppose we are at the vanguard of this new stuff, but 5G is here for me now and I need a solution today. I could save a ton and get a better 4G router, but I'd rather get something that can give me what I get on my 5G handset.

Does anyone know what the mmwave plans are for the UK while we're at it?, from an EU website I read "“Only Italy has so far assigned spectrum in the 26 GHz band."
 
Do any of them support N28 at the moment (genuinely don't know, my research says no). I suppose we are at the vanguard of this new stuff, but 5G is here for me now and I need a solution today. I could save a ton and get a better 4G router, but I'd rather get something that can give me what I get on my 5G handset.

Does anyone know what the mmwave plans are for the UK while we're at it?, from an EU website I read "“Only Italy has so far assigned spectrum in the 26 GHz band."
The CPE Pro 2 has a lot of 5G band support dabigm.

Support 5G Frequency Band: n1/n3/n5/n/7/n28/n38/n40/n41/n77/n78/n79
 
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You're very welcome.:)
 
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