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Draytek 2925 to load balance two 4g connections to get around FUP?

stoke1863

Regular Member
im in need of some help, i have tried these sims in my area all with issues.

  • Three - use to be very good but in the last year of its use (last use was 2020) speeds would drop dramatically and web pages would hang like dial up in peak times. Was getting massively frustrating.
  • Vodafone via Voxi - Faster than Three speeds around 35mb but there is something very bad in there backend in my area, while you are downloading a file latency/ping spikes to 650+ and max speed to 2mb which makes generally browsing or streaming impossible, have tried two routers with same results, i paid for AAISP and that helped a ton but thats extra money.
  • O2 vIa Lyca and Giffgagff - Get 4g+ speeds on b525 (router says using band20 only) so 60-75mb dont have any outages or drops its almost perfect but..... FUP of 650GB... with two of us working from home (and big streamers and gamers) we use much more than 650GB, Lyca claim they don't have a FUP but as soon as i hit 650GB my max speed gets throttled to 500kbs, there customer service is awful, at least Giffgaff text me to say im breaking there FUP.
  • EE - not tested but looking on cellmapper not sure they would be great?)
I have a b525 and Archer MR600, would adding a second sim alongside my 02 and using the Draytek 2925 to load balance the two connections allow me to spread my useage?

I have just won a Draytek 2925 on ebay for £70

Obviously trying to keep my monthly costs down and a 12 month contract with three is pretty cheap. How would i go setting this up to spread my usage while also avoiding some of the negatives of Three and Voda i have highlighted?

i dont understand how to use cellmapper, so if anyone wants to look at the mast situation on my area my address is

Holmewood, Chesterfield, S42 5TN
 
im in need of some help, i have tried these sims in my area all with issues.

  • Three - use to be very good but in the last year of its use (last use was 2020) speeds would drop dramatically and web pages would hang like dial up in peak times. Was getting massively frustrating.
  • Vodafone via Voxi - Faster than Three speeds around 35mb but there is something very bad in there backend in my area, while you are downloading a file latency/ping spikes to 650+ and max speed to 2mb which makes generally browsing or streaming impossible, have tried two routers with same results, i paid for AAISP and that helped a ton but thats extra money.
  • O2 vIa Lyca and Giffgagff - Get 4g+ speeds on b525 (router says using band20 only) so 60-75mb dont have any outages or drops its almost perfect but..... FUP of 650GB... with two of us working from home (and big streamers and gamers) we use much more than 650GB, Lyca claim they don't have a FUP but as soon as i hit 650GB my max speed gets throttled to 500kbs, there customer service is awful, at least Giffgaff text me to say im breaking there FUP.
  • EE - not tested but looking on cellmapper not sure they would be great?)
I have a b525 and Archer MR600, would adding a second sim alongside my 02 and using the Draytek 2925 to load balance the two connections allow me to spread my useage?

I have just won a Draytek 2925 on ebay for £70

Obviously trying to keep my monthly costs down and a 12 month contract with three is pretty cheap. How would i go setting this up to spread my usage while also avoiding some of the negatives of Three and Voda i have highlighted?

i dont understand how to use cellmapper, so if anyone wants to look at the mast situation on my area my address is

Holmewood, Chesterfield, S42 5TN
I think it would be worth giving EE a try looking at cellmapper in your area, one of your masts has bands 1,3,20 so should provide ok speeds.
 
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Do try EE. My nearest mast has EE on bands 1,3,20 and gives me the fastest connection overall of any provider. Three use the same mast but I cancelled my contract with them after they worked on the mast and broke something (dropping my throughput from 30-60 Mbps to 12, and 20-30 up to a pathetic 1Mbps). Three were entirely uninterested in fixing it.

With EE on the same mast, and with a better router (B818 - previously I used a B525) I get on average 100Mbps down 37Mbps up.

As I work from home and am very dependent on having a decent internet connection, I decided to get a Draytek 2925 and do the load balancing/failover thing. I tried all the providers and opted for Vodafone average 90Mbps down 8Mbps up. I don't know why the upload speed is so poor; the mast is further away so maybe that's it. I'm familiar with Drayteks and their rather old UI, but the device works very well and is a much much much better router than the Huawei 4G routers. I didn't need to do anything to get it going, though since then I've set up some routing rules, and I've set the average d/l and u/l speeds for each WAN so the load balancing will balance connections accordingly. It is nice to see speedtests of up to 300 Mbps down 90 Mbps up, but again it's really just for failover for me.

As for FUPs, my typical monthly bandwidth is about half of EE's FUP, so I've not needed to do anything to avoid breaching it.

Dave
 
I have a Draytek 2925 and its 2 wan connections go to a Three mast and an EE mast. To get over the useless surfing on Three at peak times the Draytek points all surfing on ports 80 and 443 to EE, all other traffic uses both wans. Works well and data gets shared pretty well equally but there are settings that will set limits if needed on the Draytek called WAN budget, it allows monthly limits and you can set the mobile contract date for the proper monthly rollover.
 
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There is a cheaper EE plan for small businesses, it's the one they recommend if you break the FUP or have too many devices connected. You pay less and get better limits, really odd.
 
There is a cheaper EE plan for small businesses, it's the one they recommend if you break the FUP or have too many devices connected. You pay less and get better limits, really odd.
I've actually got a small business (not VAT registered though )

looking at Cellmapper, Would I be likely to get 4g+ on EE? Like I do now on 02
 
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If that band 1,3,20 mast covers you, then yes you will :)
Do you have a link to this business plan? They all seem pretty pricey to me. I'm not wanting to take on anything more than 12 months, 30 days is even better depending on price.
 
There is a cheaper EE plan for small businesses, it's the one they recommend if you break the FUP or have too many devices connected. You pay less and get better limits, really odd.
Do you have a link to this plan? Could I not use something Utility warehouse ? They are using EE
 
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Do you have a link to this plan? Could I not use something Utility warehouse ? They are using EE
You could. They are capped at 40 down. I've been using them for a couple of months now and have had no issues. I've only had 2 devices connected to the UW sim though, so its possible more could trigger something on their end and create a headache.

Edit: They don't state a fair usage amount either (unless it has changed) but i believe they do have problems with heavy users and those that use their sim in devices that aren't phones, going by the comment section of hotukdeals if i remember correctly. I have been using 800gb to 1000gb, not a peep from them. No harm in trying though as its a monthly rolling contract.
 
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