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Congrats to 3Gstore Customer Adam B. For Writing Review of a Pepwave Surf On-The-Go 3G/4G Router w/ WiFi as WAN (Surf OTG) Version 2.0

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Congrats to Adam B. of Hoboken, New Jersey who just won a $25.00 Restaurant.com gift code for writing a review for Pepwave Surf On-The-Go 3G/4G Router w/ WiFi as WAN (Surf OTG) Version 2.0 at 3Gstore.com! Every week we randomly pick one product review from the previous week and award the writer a $25.00 gift code. We appreciate ALL the reviews our customers write, whether they are positive or negative - honest reviews like Adam B.\'s help other customers decide if the product is right for them. After you purchase a product from 3Gstore.com, we encourage you to log in and 3Gstore.com and leave a review letting people know how the product worked for you - you'll be helping others, and you'll automatically be entered to win a restaurant.com gift code!.

I bought this SUS-AGN1 after returning a somewhat similar device, the TP-LINK MR3040 (http://amzn.com/B0088PPFP4?tag=kc2-20). I liked the TP-LINK, but it didn't support many modems (only 11 in the US), and OpenWRT/DD-WRT seemed inadequate. The Peplink model was 2.5x the price and wasn't battery/USB powered, but it seemed like it had a real company behind it, and I needed something robust. I spoke with Peplink sales and they seemed pretty great. They said this "on the go" model should benefit from updates that their other Surf routers receive (i.e. new modems), though I'm a bit skeptical because the "on the go" product isn't even listed on their website anymore. They also told me they can remotely connect to your router (on your request) to try to make an unsupported modem work. This benefits them because they can add another modem to their list of supported devices. I bought it from 3gstore for an extra $5 over other sites, because of their great support, and because another seller couldn't guarantee me the 2.0 hardware (which has a faster USB port to handle 4G modems). Overall the device works, but I was hoping for a slightly smoother experience. I am a technical guy, and I've used cellular routers before, but it still took me about 2.5 hours of playing with this thing to really understand all the settings. There are several items missing from the documentation that I needed to figure out or still haven't (profiles, bridge mode, "preferred modem"). -- A few things to note that may not be obvious: - Although this router supports both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wifi, you can only use one at a time. This is not how my dual band home router works. Additionally, if using Wifi-as-WAN, then your local network must be on the same band (and channel) as the WAN network. - The failover feature is nice, but could be nicer. Specifically, you can only failover TO a USB modem. I can imagine several scenarios where you may want to failover between Wired and Wifi, Wifi to Wifi, or even USB to Wired/Wifi. As just one example, if your 3G device is a mobile hotspot, then you'd need Wired-_Wifi failover to make use of it. It would be great to see that added. Also, your main link has to be down for 25 seconds minimum before failover is initiated. - Maybe it's limited just to my aircard (Franklin U301), but I couldn't get much info about the current state of the connection. Was it 3G or 4G, what was the signal strength, etc. Aside from "Authenticating" and "Connected", I couldn't see much status. - The Management interface seems ALWAYS accessible from the WAN side. Can't disable WAN admin like most routers. So make sure you set a strong password, or you're open for attack. - The Wifi-WAN profiles are confusing until you realize they are are similar to on a laptop: You can add multiple wifi-WAN profiles, and the router will automatically pick the strongest one it sees. (If you star a profile, it will take precedence.) I think the Roaming mode will have the router periodically scan all of your profiles for stronger options. There are 2 reasons this is confusing: 1. When you "select" a profile in the settings, you aren't telling the router to use that profile. You're just opening the profile to view/edit the options. 2. If you search for a new wifi network and connect to it without first adding a new profile, then you are constantly just overwriting the settings for one of your existing profiles. You could very easily accidentally overwrite a profile this way. - The power connector seems to use a standard 5.5mm x 2.1mm coaxial connector and provides 12VDC, so you should be able to power this thing from a simple car adapter like this one: http://amzn.com/B00DIG2R9K?tag=kc2-20 - your car might have higher/lower voltages, and you could damage the thing, but in general it's likely to work fine. - The unit comes with suction cups so you can hang it from a window to give the antenna a good view.



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