WiFiRanger Intelligent Mobile Router Hands-On Review

[3Gstore]

Hey guys,

I'm happy to announce that we're now carrying the WiFi Ranger after extensive testing. I know that there's been a lot of talk about this device and we've been testing it for a while. I must say that I've been pretty impressed with the performance of the ranger!

You can read our full review here - WiFiRanger Intelligent Mobile Router Hands-On Review

 

[DougAndJudy]

That was a pretty optimistic review.

We've had the WifiRanger since late December and still cannot rely on it as our main internet source. We have the latest firmware upgrade (Mar 16). The router has been steadily improved with each firmware release, but still has a few major flaws. In the above review, in the Wish It Had section was the statement:

Failback (the router will failover to your secondary connections if the primary connection fails, but it will not failback to the primary one when it comes back online)

This is a biggie. We have a cellular modem plugged into our WFR and it works fine, mostly. When it loses its connection, though, it tries to find a wifi source (I have that deavtivated) then tries an ethernet connection (which we don't have at all...) But it does not retry the cellular connection. I do have it selected as the #1 failover option. You can open the Control Panel and manually click a Connect button for the cellular, but this hardly qualifies as Intelligent Failover.

What I expect from WiFiRanger is the equivalent of a Cradlepoint router with the additional ability to connect to a park wifi. WFR has done a lot of work to make a good wifi section, but has skimped on the cellular side. Hopefully the development team will address this shortcoming.

 

[DougAndJudy]

I spent some time with Brian of WFR support this morning. He was unable to reproduce any of the oddities that I have been experiencing. He suggested it may have been a faulty upload of the firmware uprade, so offered to perform an upgrade from his end. Once the upgrade was completed and Brian called back, he said that a setting that was in prior versions of the Control Panel was no longer available to change, but that my values had been removed, probably by me. He reinstated the value while doing the upgrade and all is well! I tried several different methods of making the cellular connection fail, and WFR was able to reconnect automatically each time! I'm a happy camper. So far...

 

[3Gstore]

I'm glad to hear that the were able to get your issues resolved. I know that each version of the firmware I've gotten has been better and better fixing the issues that we discover.

I spent some time with Brian of WFR support this morning. He was unable to reproduce any of the oddities that I have been experiencing. He suggested it may have been a faulty upload of the firmware uprade, so offered to perform an upgrade from his end. Once the upgrade was completed and Brian called back, he said that a setting that was in prior versions of the Control Panel was no longer available to change, but that my values had been removed, probably by me. He reinstated the value while doing the upgrade and all is well! I tried several different methods of making the cellular connection fail, and WFR was able to reconnect automatically each time! I'm a happy camper. So far...