Hi,
I am having very poor support from my fibre provider in the UK. I have very good 5g coverage and am considering ditching the fibre for 5g. I have a Hex s (not 2025). What do you suggest I do to connect a dongle to the router or what hardware is best to use
Cheers Dave
The issue (generic) with dongles attached to the USB port of a Mikrotik device is that support for them is not "uniform", a given device (say your hex s) may work with dongle A but not witrh dongle B, but dongle B works just fine on another Mikrotik device.
There is a list here:
with compatible devices, but the list is not frequently updated and sometimes a same dongle will work with one of its firmware revision but not with another one (and this info is rarely specified when you go out for shopping on the internet).
So your mileage may vary, unless you find someone that reports that a given suitable dongle is actually working on your hex S, and you cna find that same exact model.
There are no 5G USB dongles available on the market. I’ve seen USB to M.2 adapters on Chinese e-commerce website but I have no idea if these will work with RouterOS.
As a general matter, most LTE/5G devices that work without installing drivers in Windows, will also work on RouterOS. MikroTik support MBIM protocol, which is same as Microsoft uses (and they created spec).
You need a "Key B" style adapter that supports USB 3. Most 5G modems still connect via USB 3.0, perhaps not all (some may be pure PCIe devices)
Even architecture can make a difference.
Recently learned moving L009 from ARM to ARM64 and 2.5Gb SFP from fs.com all of a sudden works.
Hi All,
This was / is my first post and was not expecting such a huge response, but thank you.
I am waiting on a response from the fibre company to see what they are going to do but I need a backup plan.
What is the Chateau router like, would that be a better option than trying to find a “dongle” that may or may not work and may then stop working on a firmware upgrade?
If you can afford one, don't even think of retro-fitting a dongle (of dubious quality) on a (dubiously compatible) old Mikrotik device.
Spending a (rather hefty) amount of money for a new device you would remove from the equation a lot of unknown variables.
You can also often plugin a hotpot from the carrier to the hAP ax S as middle ground. Many have USB which you'd need to get a direct connection to modem.
Looks like the router I wanted is on back order here in the UK. Does anyone have any experience with a 5g dongle that has an Ethernet port?
Somerthing like this?:
https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/wifi-router/m8550/
that one costs an arm and a leg.
Yes, that looks like it would work!!
I'm not sure that work in UK. Perhaps it's just their website (from US), but it shows offering the US LTE/5G bands. Not the EU ones.
It does change the displayed specs if one changes country. UK site shows two versions for "network type", one is "US version" and other one is "EU version" - the later supports also 3G.
Hmmm ... it supports 6GHz WiFi band, so it's at least WiFi6e ... but doesn't list WPA3 as supported?
3G is being phased out in quite some countries, as far as I know ?
At least here it is.
It is ... it seems that tp-link couldn't source EU modem without 3G support. They don't list max speed for 3G though (they are there for 4G and 5G).
I use a device from Teltonika at one of our locations at work, and it works “ok”, but it is quite expensive.
Reason was the same at that time: MikroTik Chateau LTE xx not available (was an older model than you would buy today, but limited supply just as well)…
I also have an old Teltonika (but only LTE) one and it came out as a very reliable device, but it also not exactly cheap.
The RUTX50 sells for around 500 €.
If I had some good money to spend on one of these things, I would probablty go for one of the gl-inet routers, but they are also far from cheap.
Besides actual availability of many models, it seems that the magic word "5G" actually means "3x increase of price" (when compared to a 4G one).