Peplink vs Winguard

[Overtaxed]

My old and new RV both had a Connect 2.0 from Winguard. Both worked OK, but I was never impressed; random disconnects, sending tons of data would lock it up, roaming from Wifi to cellular failed a lot. In short, it was better than a hotspot because it was on the roof, but left a lot to be desired.

In my new RV, I decided it was time to try something better. Got the Peplink Max BR1 Pro 5G (X62), the Parsec Husky Pro, a 24X24 piece of aluminum from Lowes and had at it. This was one of those "Man, I hope this it worth it" projects, everyone claims to have solid connectivity, few deliver.

This is my 2nd week camping with this setup, and, right now, it falls into "Why didn't I do this years ago". It's SO much better. The roaming is ROCK solid from SIM to SIM or SIM to wifi. Speedfusion "just works" once you get it setup. I've NEVER had a disconnect with the Peplink no matter how much traffic I throw at it. The speeds are, realistically in the 2 places we've camped so far (regular spots for us, so I had some experience at that exact location with Winguard) 5-10X what we got on the old setup.

Honestly, it's real darn close to what I have at home for anything but video streaming, sites load nearly instantly, data moves around the RV easily (NAS to hold my shows, etc). Port forwarding works, NAT works. Remote admin works and is awesome. Dual SIMs work.

Summing up.. It just works. It's incredibly solid and incredibly flexible.

Now.. The harder question, should you buy one? I really struggle with this answer, I'm a network admin by trade, so when I opened the Peplink interface, it makes a ton of sense to me. On the Winguard, as a consumer device, I'd have to try to figure out what it was telling me (I want to make a NAT, is that what we're doing here??). But for someone who's not a network geek, this thing might be a bit much. If you're serious about Internet on the road and not a geek, I'd suggest you do it and pay someone to help you set it up if need be. If you're a network geek, absolutely, it's better in every way except cost, and, honestly, it's ~2X the cost and many times the functionality and power/speed. If you're casual, would like Internet but not a huge deal if you don't have it and money is a big issue, the Winguard does work, we used it for years, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it over just getting a hotspot and using that. It's a little better, but for that "little better" you'll pay a price of increased complexity and reduced reliability.

Just wanted to pass on my experience, nobody paid me for the post, and I'm not dropping any links to anything (although, I was happy with MobileMustHave, where I ordered most of the stuff). When something is really good, I want to make sure others hear about it, and this thing is really, really darn good. I had no idea that cellular Internet could be this fast and reliable.

 

[Second Chance]

Thanks for the report. There must be a reason that the Peplink is about all the folks over on Mobile Internet Resource Center (rvmobileinternet) talk about - they even do a regular live web meeting to talk about it.

Rob

 

[Overtaxed]

Thanks for the report. There must be a reason that the Peplink is about all the folks over on Mobile Internet Resource Center (rvmobileinternet) talk about - they even do a regular live web meeting to talk about it.

Rob

It's seriously in a completely different class than something like the Winguard or any consumer router/wifi device. If you've ever used Ubiquti (which is my whole network at home), it's similar to that; it's "enterprise configurable", but has a UI that makes most of the stuff you'd need to do relatively easy if you understand IP networking. It does have a CLI as well, but I've not needed to use it.

I'm really picky about Internet. As mentioned, it's my job, and many times I'm on someone's home Wifi, I can "feel" problems, something not setup right (wrong bands selected, MTUs off, etc). I'm saying this honestly, right now, using it to type this on a cheap-o Mint SIM that I have in there, I can barely "feel" that I'm not on my 1Gb/s link at home. Now, I could figure it out real fast, there's nowhere near the bandwidth; but the latency is so low that loading sites like this one happen fast enough that it's near "instant", and once you reach the limits of perception, further improvements can't be "felt" anymore.

I'm really shocked. I expected it to fix my ran-do disconnects (which is has) and I expected the cell service to be a little faster, but, man, this is like going from a 56K modem to a cable connection, anyone would notice within the first few web pages they loaded.

I was thinking about the cost; I think I'm all in around 1500 on this setup for the router, antenna and supplies I used to put it in. Compared with the Winegard at ~350 bucks, it's a whole lot more expensive. For casual use, I still would say the Winegard isn't a bad device, especially not at 300-400 bucks. But if you want it to be "like home" for Internet, after 3-4 years of fighting with it, the Winegard is simply not capable; you won't get that experience.

We work remotely a lot from the RV, and I'd have to select parks that had good enough Wifi, really limiting our choices. This thing, honestly, as long as there's a cell signal that 4G or better, I feel like we'll be able to make it work. Really looking forward to trying to bonding when we have park service and a decent cell, but that's more "geek" than "need".