Which is the optimal product/line for setup in passthrough mode in order to provide cellular internet connection to an existing (3rd party) router?
I have several Ubiquiti UniFi networks that I manage, all of which have either USG, USG-Pro, or UXG-Pro firewall/router that I don’t wish to replace. For some of these networks we’ve deployed Netgear cellular modems (LB1120 and LM1200) as either the primary internet connection or the backup (using the UniFi firewall to handle automatic failover/failback). We wish to replace the Netgear cellular modems as they lack remote monitoring and management capability.
We’d be looking at utilizing the passthrough mode (like how we have the Netgears configured) to assign the public IP to the UniFi router/firewall in order to avoid double-NAT issues.
Which product, gateway (TRB…) or router (RUT…), would be the optimal solution here?
For this one, if 1 sim card and 1 gigabit ethernet port is enough, TRB140 should be optimal on your requirement. It has 1 gig ethernet port similar to the mentioned modems.
However, if you need an additional LAN port, you can proceed with RUT200 or RUT241 as it has 1 LAN and 1 WAN fast ethernet port (WAN port can be configured as LAN as well).
Note that all TRB and RUT devices has Mini SIM form factor tray, but it comes with a SIM adapter for different form factors.
It appears that the primary differences between the router (RUT) and gateway (TRB) devices is in the number and type of physical interfaces. Specifically, the router devices have multiple ethernet interfaces as well as most have Wi-Fi, while the gateway devices only support wired connections via single ethernet port, RS232, RS485, or a Input/Output connector block.
We do not need Wi-Fi capability, and only require a single ethernet port, so it seems that a gateway device (TRB140 as @michaelis suggested or TRB143 [or TRB500 if we want 5G]) would be optimal for our application.
My only concern with the gateway devices is, with them being designed to support a single client/device, if there any hardware and/or software limitations on the number of connections that they support? For our application, we might be using this device as a backup internet connection for a network with 50+ users and need it to support tens or even hundreds of thousands of connections… For this reason I wondered whether the router line might be better suited?
If your budget is pretty high, I’d recommend going with the TRB500 or RUTX09 (Dual sim for failover and doesn’t have WifI) instead, for better hadware specs to accommodate simultaneous traffic from 50+ users.
This is just my personal preference since even though the device’s purpose is to be a backup when network downtime occurs, you’d still want to have seamless connectivity, especially for a lot of traffic coming from the users.
As I’ve found out from sales and from this Wiki article, there’s a very limited subset of devices actually certified and/or supported in North America which is pretty disappointing. Out of those limited devices, there’s currently none that support 5G, and if I want gigabit ethernet ports to support Cat. 4+ speeds then my only option is the RUTX11 which includes features we don’t need (such as multiple ports and Wi-Fi) and is more than twice the cost of our current solution.
I really hope that Teltonika can get the TRB140 and/or 143, or at least the RUTX09 certified/supported in North America. Until then I guess we’ll be rolling with our current Netgear solution.