So many of us are working from home, and the NBN might not be cutting it, so what could? 4G, and D-Link has a solution to bring it home.
Now that many of us are using the home broadband connection a little more than we’d normally, there’s a chance it’s struggling under the load. Whether it’s because you didn’t pick a fast enough speed or the National Broadband Network isn’t quite reaching what we all expected, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if you were looking for other options.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many. If you need high speed internet in Australia, you’re probably looking at the NBN, cable (if you still have it and your neighbourhood hasn’t forced you over to NBN), and then your phone’s 4G or 5G connection.
Mobile 5G connections are a little harder to find, but your 4G connection from your phone can work as a hotspot for a few devices.
Yet there’s still another option, and depending on if you have an extra SIM, it might prove useful: a dedicated 4G modem for the home.
These aren’t a new thing, but there are new models coming out, and D-Link has one just in time for all of this thing going down keeping us at home.
It’s coming in the D-Link DWR-956, a dual-band 802.11ac router sporting an AC1200 connection with maximum speeds of 1167Mbps (roughly 1.2Gbps), and support of a Category 4 4G LTE connection.
For those not keeping up with the typical technical jargon, Category 4 LTE connections allow for a maximum speed of 150Mbps down, and is something we’ve seen on D-Link’s 4G modems in the past. In the DWR-956, it looks as though D-Link has taken the technology and bundled it into a newer 802.11ac router design, while adding one other feature: support for analogue phone calls.
That’s a feature that’ll be dependent on the mobile provider, though the FXS port will mean phones may be able to connect and use the technology for phone calls.
There’s also a firewall built in — part and parcel of most routers these days — as well as a way to manage the router using your phone (so you don’t need to be a total tech savvy genius with your computer), though we suspect you’ll still want to know something, like grabbing a 4G SIM and plan, which of course it doesn’t come with.
At $349.95, however, D-Link’s DWR-956 could just be the cure to get over any potential NBN blues, just make sure you have that SIM card at the ready, because it won’t do much more than be a WiFi network without a 4G connection.
