Upgrading to 4G connectivity Switching to a faster mobile network Enhancing your internet speed with 4G
Upgrading to 4G connectivity Switching to a faster mobile network Enhancing your internet speed with 4G
I reside in a village where 4G connections outperform ADSL in terms of speed. My brother and I are considering investing in a 4G router because a mobile provider offers unlimited data plans. My concern is whether, with my S9+ achieving about 105MBPS download and 50MBPS upload, I should purchase a CAT-4 LTE router (TP-LINK TL-MR6400) priced at 70€ or opt for a CAT-6 LTE model (TP-LINK Archer MR600) costing more than double that.
Before switching to LTE, have you or your sibling played any gaming or server hosting activities? A major drawback of LTE is that it frequently forces users into NAT64-CGN, complicating server hosting and potentially locking in your online games under strict NAT. Could this affect you? Solutions exist but they demand time, some technical know-how, and occasionally payment.
I chose to switch to LTE for a significant improvement over my current network, which offers up to 5mbps download and less than 1 mbps upload. For your question, yes—I’ll be playing online games and attempting to host a server, though it won’t be a major issue if hosting fails.
Also bear in mind that latency over LTE is never as good and when its bad it will be unplayably bad. There is just a lot more chance of performance issues over LTE as there are a lot more users sharing the same bandwidth. If you can afford it, I'd keep both. LTE for big downloads and DSL for gaming, at least until you get a feel of if LTE is good enough in your area.
If that applies, the key distinction lies in the download speed increase from 150Mbps to 300Mbps. The upload speed remains unchanged at 50Mbps. Currently, the features of each model are clear: the TP-LINK TL-MR6400 offers only 10/100Mbps ports, whereas the Archer MR600 supports 10/100/1000Mbps. By modern standards, 100Mbps feels quite old. Today’s routers typically include Gigabit (1000) ports. Avoid devices restricted to FastEthernet (100).
LTE can sometimes add extra NAT layers to your connection, which may cause games to complain about strict NAT rules and increase latency due to multiple hops. Regarding bandwidth, it’s not just about the speed you see on your phone—your router needs to handle higher capacities. LTE uses radio standards with features like Carrier Aggregation (CA) to boost data rates by combining signals from several cells or frequencies. Your device can take advantage of these improvements, but compatibility varies: some routers support many CA options while others may only work on a single band. For details, check cacombos.com for supported combinations and cellmapper.net for tower locations and network info. Both platforms rely on community data, so coverage might be incomplete in certain areas. With an Android phone, you can use apps like CellMapper to map nearby networks and see available options.
Certain providers provide options without NAT, such as my mobile carrier offering straightforward IPv6 access via LTE and/or 5G, and in some cases also IPv4 connectivity.
In fact, my friend gave me his router (ha35-10) that combines ADSL and LTE. I’m only testing the LTE side so far, and it’s performing well—both speedy and compatible with all the games I’ve tried. The gap between 5/1Mbps and 40/4Mbps is really noticeable.