[SOLVED] How to integrate 4G phone into slower broadband home network

[flshfrnd]

Hello

I have 20Mbps FTTC internet at home. I also have ethernet ports in all rooms that need them wired back to an Asus router and DSL modem.

I also have an oldish 4G phone that gets a data speed of 40Mbps and I would like to used this for things where my internet speed is critical. I would just use it as a hotspot, but it only gets these speeds in one part of the house. If I put it where it is most needed, next to my main PC it only gets 20Mbps.

Can anybody recommend good ways to integrate this phone (an Honor Play from 2019) into my network, so that devices that need the fastest possible internet data connection can get this.

Many thanks

ff

 

[bill001g]

So first question is is the phone plan actually unlimited when it is running in tethered/hotspot mode. This is very rare to find most have some kind of limit in the fine print.

It is going to be a lot of effort to get this to work.

The short version is you use both the wifi and ethernet nic in the end devices. You then use the route command so you can tell your pc which ip addresses on the internet should use which connection. Unless you have very small lists of ip addresses this becomes quickly unusable.

This also does not really work for anything other than a pc. It gets much more complex if you need to add a special router that can do this.

 

[flshfrnd]

Thanks for your response. The data plan is not unlimited but it has a 100GB allowance per month (with a rollover) and this is enough for me. Actually, it would really only need a connection to one PC if this is the simplest arrangement.

Do usbc to ethernet connectors actually for mobiles actually work? The simplest solution would just be to use one of those to connect the phone to the PC when I need the extra data throughput

DUH I'm being dumb. The phone has to be in a different part of the house to the PC. That was the whole problem!!!*

 

[bill001g]

If you can just switch when you need it that will be simpler. You just unplug the ethernet and it will switch to the wifi and switch back when you plug the ethernet in. It will still be somewhat messy because the internet IP will change and you will get logged out of sites and get captcha things.

Otherwise look at the ROUTE command. Your first task is to get lists of IP you want to use on the secondary connection.

 

[flshfrnd]

Yes but unfortunately the hotspot is not in range of the PC that requires access. Would an extender be the easiest option? I have had mixed results with these, often dropping speed for no apparent reason and requiring a reboot.

If there is a better infrastructure solution I would be glad to know it and my level of knowledge of networking is not advanced. I can manage at the level of unmanaged switches etc., setting fixed ip's on my router but anything beyond that is a bit of a mystery to me

Thanks

 

[bill001g]

This is hard to solve even when the device is a actual router. Many hotspot are missing a lot of features.

Repeaters as you noted have lots of problems with poor performance. Repeater are always last on my list of things to try.

Many hotspots do not have WDS support which means no repeater will connect to them.

Sill you now have 2 messy problems. The routing issue is bad enough.

So first issue is how do you get the signal from the hotspot location to your pc. This is not real hard Moca if you have tv coax or powerline networks. Of course you can use ethernet if you have it. Problem is these all appear as ethernet so you need a second ethernet in your PC or you would have to manually swap cables. Swapping the cables solve the "route" command issue.

But even then that only solves the PC end. You could then put in a Repeater/extender that you are using in client-bridge mode. In effect what you have done is put a wifi nic card on the end of a long ethernet cable and placed it in the same room as hotspot.

Another option would be to see if the hotspot can run in tethered mode to a router. Many asus routers support phones usb tethered......but not all phones. You would then have the higher power radios in a router and you could connect etherent directly to the router without the client-bridge hack.

......are you really sure you want to do this. I guess when you only can get DSL you consider stuff like this.

 

[microtank]

How many feet from the juicy 40 mbps zone? In all honesty it depends what you “need” or “want” it for.