You might be in the same situation as me. In a metro location, but completely overlooked by broadband options. Can’t get the NBN. ADSL is so slow as to be useless. Fixed wireless options are way too expensive. Basically, you’re in an Internet black hole.

If this is you, chances are you’re going to reach the same conclusion as me. The only way to get high-speed broadband is to find a good value mobile broadband plan, and use that. The next logical question is how to share that connection – which is traditionally used with a USB 4G dongle, or a cheap and nasty 4G Hotspot – with your home network.

Enter D-Link’s new DWM-312 4G LTE M2M Dual SIM Router with Advanced VPN capabilities.

It’s a mouthful, but it’s the answer. This industrial-looking device takes one or two SIM cards (you can have a redundant network, if you like) and connects you to Australia’s fastest 4G networks such as Telstra 4GX and Optus 4G Plus, giving you (theoretical) speeds up to 150Mbps down and 50Mbps up – that’s faster than the NBN, too.

Of course, the DWM-312 is designed for industrial applications, and a little disappointingly, it’s priced there too – it’s not cheap with a retail price around the $649 mark, but in a market where there are quite literally one or two quality alternatives (and no, I’m not talking about the consumer-grade 4G routers which frankly are garbage) this might be the price of getting your house connected.

How would you use this? Simple. Chuck a SIM in the DWM-312, configure it with the built-in web interface, and connect it to your home network. While this is a router, it only has a single Ethernet port, so you’re better off using it as a 4G bridge to your existing WiFi router or similar.

I’m going to do exactly this, and run it with Google WiFi and see how fast D-Link’s DWM-312 4G router goes in my place. It will replace the 4G USB dongle plugged into a cheap USB router thing which crashes frequently and offers poor speed, and see whether it can get my network going at the speed I want.

Source: D-Link Australia.
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Peter

I curious Chris, what data plan do you use to complement this device? Is there a data plan good enough to take over from ADSL yet?

Chris Rowland

I’m trying Vivid at the moment, but we still have a couple of active Optus services with a combined data pool of 280GB. Much faster than vivid but also a bit dearer. When I review the D-Link it’ll likely be with the Optus service – Vivid Sim doesn’t work in anything else.

Phill Edwards

Should certainly make it easier to have a backup option if your primary ISP goes down.

Clinton

Can you put it into bridged mode?

Allan Thomas

Hi Chris,

I’ll be interested to hear the outcome of your trial of this unit.

Cheers

Ian

Vividwireless is a winner on cost if you can get it.

Chris Rowland

Vivid is what we’re using at the moment, or trying at least. However it’s slow as hell.