Hi MB - can you point me to any info on this Vodafone deal? I can find the E5186S router info (seems to be an upgrade to my B593s-22) but nothing about the the Vodafone ON package you refer to nor about these speeds being available on their 4G network, only on fibre. Is it a net / TV / voice deal etc.? I'm intrigued!

How are you measuring your download speed - Ookla SpeedTest?

Thanks

Hi Graeme, As is often the case they shift things around all the time on the site so the names change around and its now called Fixa Biz for reasons know best to their marketing department. The page link is Soluções Fixa Biz - Internet Fixa

I do test with OOkla but always swap to servers outside Portugal (USA or UK) as 99% of my usage is international traffic and I suspect the PT National servers are going to show better results than they should. I am so far getting close to the advertised speed over a period of 2 months (but have kept my PT phone line just in case the technogy advances quickly and they do deliver fibre to the hills ! ).

Well, you live and learn. Thanks for the correction. Who knew what lurks in the depths of the Vodafone website. Seems similar to the Voz Fixa 100 they're offering for 32 euros, although now see they do a 150 offer for a bit more. I've always hesitated against upgrading as I rarely get anywhere near the 20 I'm promised even with 3 out of 5 4G bars. Question if you don't mind. Are you using external antennae to get that speed or was it just out of the box? Presumably your in close line of site to an upgraded mast? Thanks

Its the latter - we are line of sight to a 4.5G LTE mast, at a guess 1750m 'above and behind' the house. No external antenna supplied with the router although easily/cheaply available from fleabay. Note however that the Vodafone service does say it has a limit of 100gb per month which makes it less exciting for anyone with determined IPTV or a 4K UHD TV requirement.

I have yet to get close to that to find out if it's a physical limit or just a frightener on paper. As far as I can tell from my own reading many of the 4G based services show a finite limit in the small print and only MEO doesn't?

Yes, the devil's in the detail. Family over last month and managed 185Gb in a fortnight. God knows how. Teenagers etc.... That's normally 4X we do in a month. Didn't drop though so maybe just on paper.

Hi MB, quick question as you're the guru, compliment meant!!

Can you change the DNS on the E5186 from Vodafone? Tried to put in a UK DNS on the B593-22, but no do.. Need to change DNS on each device. If so, definitely worth a buy.

If you are asking if it's possible to set a VPN in the Huawei that gets used by any connected device then the answer is no as it doesn't have that facility within the router settings and you are stuck with the geo location info offered by the original provider, in my case this is Vodafone PT. You will need to set VPN access separately per device that requires VPN anonymity or a specific country location ie. UK for BBC iPlayer etc.


I assumed an acronym mixup so if you really mean DNS or DHCP you will have to get back to me.

I'd be surprised if you can get in to change any settings as most service providers password protect the admin profile - unless you can guess it.
I found this with the router provided by my ISP but found that the router was a cheap TP-Link model so I sourced one from amazon and swapped it over and changed the DNS settings.

Hi MB, no not an acronym mixup, nor VPN. I've got a UK DNS set up on the TV to let me view UK through iPlayer etc. When it tried to set it up on the router, to avoid needing to set up every device just get the 'gray' cloud. Wondered if your router was more lenient?

My solution was simply to buy a second router from fleabay or OLX (can't remember which), hard-wire it to my main Huawei B593-22s router and put SmartDNS on it.

So I now have my "regular" wi-fi network which registers as Portugal, used for day-to-day activities, and my "SmartDNS" network which registers me as UK or US, depending on how I set it up. I bought a used Linksys E4200 for this purpose which also gives me 5GHz wi-fi as well as the normal 2.4GHz and setting up SmartDNS is pretty simple.

My TV and assorted streaming boxes connect to the SmartDNS network and all the Apps (iPlayer, etc.) work OK.

Incidentally, if you don't have a smart TV (or one which - like mine - doesn't have all the UK TV apps yet) or a streaming box yet, I can heartily recommend the Sky NowTV 2 box which is a steal at around £15 or a bit more pre-loaded with Plex.

Hope this all makes sense.

Total sense and a brilliant idea. I have an old router somewhere so I'll dig it out and give it a go. If that works I may, if I'm allowed, procure a more up to date router. Would also give access to more than the 32 clients. Thanks for the heads up on the Now TV box. Probably don't need as I've downloaded all the useful UK apps onto the TV and have Netfix etc through Kodi. More importantly though I don't think I'd be allowed yet another box with all those 'ugly cable thingies'...

Back to the gadget. I currently pay MEO 46 euro for line rental and internet. The have a router offer which in the shop the assistant sort of said they are better routers than the package ones. Will I have to pay the phone line charge on top of the monthly charge (call me thick if you want) . I'm determined to beat them at this. They offered me all their packages today, you can have the top package half price for 4 months he said and I replied then I can have it full price for the other 20.
Is 30GB a month 21.6mbps sufficient for internet and a some hours kodi tv streaming?

I see NOS has a wifi 2 year contract for 20 mbps unlimited for €27 pm.
Mine is also 20 mbps but it checks out at 25 though.

If you reckon on roughly 1gb per hour of TV you will be well covered (it's actually a little less but there are some variables depending on the format)

21mb per second is plenty fast enough without buffering and freezing especially if you have a cable connection between your router and smart TV or Kodi box rather than WiFi.

Is that through the phone line (ADSL) or fibre or 4G? I'd be surprised (but impressed!) if you were getting that kind of speed through copper wires.

Questions

Do you really need a phone line?
Have you got a fibre connection?
What's your 3/4 G connection like?

IMO 30 GB a month month is not enough, as MrBife rightly says only works out at 1 hour a day of TV and that doesn't include Internet, Skype etc. We come close to 100gb a month and that's not doing much. You need to look at unlimited options.