elvisimprsntr
Active Member
pete_c said:Just an FYI there elvisimprsntr relating to your endeavor.
It's been a few years now that I have purchased a few cheapo imports here.
They were combo routers with one WAN port, one USB cellular stick port, 5 LAN port and included Wifi.
Most I spent on these combo routers at the time was around $20.
They did have WAN failover built in to the OS's and it worked just fine as I would play with them. They were just too big.
I always stayed away from Linksys, LinksysCisco crap. (except for the linux based Linksys WRT-54G). That is me.
I have been writing about tinkering with the tiny travel routers with two network ports and USB an Openwrt on them.
These do the same in a 3" square box with OpenWRT. Last endeavor was using a modded GL-iNet travel router. Here added an RTC clock and 1 wire network, plus VPN.
I have not goofed around with the little ZTE wireless device. I did find some firmware for it that would enable the USB port access which would then provide me with both wireless and USB access to the internet.
I was looking for what was hopefully a drop in solution, as I was not looking for a science project. I stayed away from USB LTE sticks for the simple reason that those require firmware support on the router side, thus limiting your options to only proven devices. Going with an Ethernet based LTE modem seemed to eliminate that problem. BTW, I am extremely please with the Netgear LB1120 LTE modem.
The LRT224 and RV042(G) routers claim to offer all the capabilities I was looking for, with a couple of exceptions. Everything seemed to be working until I tried to enable FW access rules. I tried to get Linksys to refund my $, but they will not offer refunds on products which are still under warranty, which strangely the LRT224 has a lifetime warranty. I did not save the original packaging to send it back to the company I purchased it from. I guess I am stuck with. If I can't get Linksys to fix the firmware, I guess I will just not use those features which cause problems.