Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Plenty of reviews on here, but I wanted to put up my experience in case it helps others. I used this with a relatively unknown carrier, at least outside of Alaska, GCI Communications. I did my due diligence and made sure that the unit supported the channels/frequencies that GCI was using, so I thought it was worth a shot. I have had zero troubles and am super pleased with the device thus far. Where I live, my only internet option is cellular, so I've had to put a lot of work and money into making that act like a "normal" internet connection. I was originally using a normal wifi hotspot connected to a wifi to ethernet adapter that was then connected to a common household router. I would swap the SIM's when I hit my cap, but I wanted to get multiple simultaneous cellular connections through a load balancing router to increase my throughput and reduce hassle. I was looking for a cellular "hotspot" that would act more like a router and this does exactly that. In normal bridge mode, like a typical hotspot, I lose administrative control over the device as the device simply acts as a network passthrough of the cellular connection. The extra layer 3 hop (router mode) is necessary for me to maintain administrative control over the actual cellular modem in my home network. I had to look up and put in GCI's APN information, which was easily found on the net and didn't require a call to the carrier. After that and setting a custom static IP on the device, it just worked. I get good signal strength with the device and after a couple months, haven't had to do any resets or deal with any problems like my regular hotspot has. I am a network engineer and communications expert by trade, so I'm not a "fair" judge of device complexity, but it seems this wouldn't be too difficult for most users. My application is particularly advanced, but at a basic level, this would essentially turn a cellular connection into a wired one. I love that I can put in my plan details and it keeps track of my usage against my cap and billing cycle. This gives me a lot more confidence that my carrier's usage tracking is accurate. You can also do some cool stuff with it like send SMS (text) messages from the web interface to any carrier network. It will also text me when firmware upgrades are available and plan limits are hitting a configurable threshold. It also receives text alerts from the carrier when I hit certain percentages of the data plan usage. There is also a screen where you can see the cellular side and get your exact signal strength, cell tower ID and other fun information that is often "invisible" on a cell network. The device can do basic port forwarding, but this is somewhat irrelevant for me as my carrier puts me into a private (RFC1918) space and forwarding wouldn't work anyhow. There is also an option to configure a DMZ, but I haven't played with it, again because it's somewhat irrelevant in my situation. I haven't tried UPnP either, but I don't see any options to enable it so I'm not sure. Overall, it has everything I would want and need and allowed me to do exactly what I wanted to do. With the extra boost of a second load balanced connection, I've easily got reliable 1080P streaming and I can barely tell I'm on a cellular-only connection. In fact, it's so good that I intend to buy a second one to replace my funky hotspot/wifi adapter that I use for the second internet connection!