Considering Rain

[Faziki]

Do any of you know if there is a router on the market capable of having a dual sim setup that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? Thinking of taking Rain LTE and Telkom prepaid for the peak times

 

[Faziki]

Btw thanks for the all the responses so far. helped a lot

 

[lotus123]

I haven't seen a dual SIM router, but you could look at using a router with a SIM port and a USB port and flashing it with the Rooter firmware (http://ofmodemsandmen.com/).

Rooter firmware is based on OpenWRT, but I'm not sure if it supports a default gateway changeover using Cron on the USB port. If you can then you have what you need - one SIM in the SIM slot, and a second SIM in a USB-attached modem (you'll still need one of those, unfortunately).

There's a link to the Rooter forums somewhere on that website, so you could also ask there if this approach is viable.

 

[Polymathic]

Don't consider just get a sim and test it

 

[Faziki]

My Experience so far..... Uhm yea no this is not working for me.

I went with their Rain router and Sim.

Im smack in the middle of the coverage area and im only getting 1 bar signal. Up and download speeds around

Haven't experienced any better speeds than this.

Phoned Rain and ask wtf is going on and the lady said it could be the tower so they will log a complaint but they are not going to refund me my unlimited data days. Of course I was not happy hearing that, now I cant test the network and if they fix the tower then my unlimited data days is over, kinda defeats the purpose.

She also said that a lot of users are experiencing issues with the Rain Mifi router. Some say that the battery gives issues or its not functioning as it should. I took the sim and inserted it in my phone and it gives me no signal or 1 bar.

Rain is selling their products with knowledge that they have issues and don't really fix the problem until someone complains. Giving me a sim and a router with knowledge that its either faulty or having some sort of issue.

A friend of mine has Rain too here and he said that he thought it was normal... I almost flipped. Showed him what it should be and now both of us are considering to move away from rain.

Going to ask for a full refund and order myself 100gb Cell C deal from axxess. Hopefully they have better service!


My rating so far..

Ordering -> 4 stars
Delivery -> 4 stars
Support -> 4 stars
Service -> 1 star (not even)


Would definitely not recommend this to anyone.


Edit* I love the idea but they lack on the execution of the product! if they only had that... this service would be a total game changer, hopefully one day someone wakes up at Rain headquarters and get an amazing idea to give the service that they promised to deliver in the first place.

I also took it with to visit a friend in another city that has coverage and got only 1 bar also took it to work (I live in a small town close to Nelspruit and I work in Nelspruit) And got 1 bar

 

[Speedster]

My Experience so far..... Uhm yea no this is not working for me.

I went with their Rain router and Sim.

Im smack in the middle of the coverage area and im only getting 1 bar signal. Up and download speeds around
View attachment 653096
Haven't experienced any better speeds than this.

Phoned Rain and ask wtf is going on and the lady said it could be the tower so they will log a complaint but they are not going to refund me my unlimited data days. Of course I was not happy hearing that, now I cant test the network and if they fix the tower then my unlimited data days is over, kinda defeats the purpose.

She also said that a lot of users are experiencing issues with the Rain Mifi router. Some say that the battery gives issues or its not functioning as it should. I took the sim and inserted it in my phone and it gives me no signal or 1 bar.

Rain is selling their products with knowledge that they have issues and don't really fix the problem until someone complains. Giving me a sim and a router with knowledge that its either faulty or having some sort of issue.

A friend of mine has Rain too here and he said that he thought it was normal... I almost flipped. Showed him what it should be and now both of us are considering to move away from rain.

Going to ask for a full refund and order myself 100gb Cell C deal from axxess. Hopefully they have better service!


My rating so far..

Ordering -> 4 stars
Delivery -> 4 stars
Support -> 4 stars
Service -> 1 star (not even)


Would definitely not recommend this to anyone.


Edit* I love the idea but they lack on the execution of the product! if they only had that... this service would be a total game changer, hopefully one day someone wakes up at Rain headquarters and get an amazing idea to give the service that they promised to deliver in the first place.

I also took it with to visit a friend in another city that has coverage and got only 1 bar also took it to work (I live in a small town close to Nelspruit and I work in Nelspruit) And got 1 bar

I thought the advice on the thread was to order a SIM and then make a decision once you were able to test the service in your area? Why did you ignore this?

 

[marioat1]

My Experience so far..... Uhm yea no this is not working for me.

I went with their Rain router and Sim.

Im smack in the middle of the coverage area and im only getting 1 bar signal. Up and download speeds around
View attachment 653096
Haven't experienced any better speeds than this.

Phoned Rain and ask wtf is going on and the lady said it could be the tower so they will log a complaint but they are not going to refund me my unlimited data days. Of course I was not happy hearing that, now I cant test the network and if they fix the tower then my unlimited data days is over, kinda defeats the purpose.

She also said that a lot of users are experiencing issues with the Rain Mifi router. Some say that the battery gives issues or its not functioning as it should. I took the sim and inserted it in my phone and it gives me no signal or 1 bar.

Rain is selling their products with knowledge that they have issues and don't really fix the problem until someone complains. Giving me a sim and a router with knowledge that its either faulty or having some sort of issue.

A friend of mine has Rain too here and he said that he thought it was normal... I almost flipped. Showed him what it should be and now both of us are considering to move away from rain.

Going to ask for a full refund and order myself 100gb Cell C deal from axxess. Hopefully they have better service!


My rating so far..

Ordering -> 4 stars
Delivery -> 4 stars
Support -> 4 stars
Service -> 1 star (not even)


Would definitely not recommend this to anyone.


Edit* I love the idea but they lack on the execution of the product! if they only had that... this service would be a total game changer, hopefully one day someone wakes up at Rain headquarters and get an amazing idea to give the service that they promised to deliver in the first place.

I also took it with to visit a friend in another city that has coverage and got only 1 bar also took it to work (I live in a small town close to Nelspruit and I work in Nelspruit) And got 1 bar

Think you should read the thread on cellc, then reconsider that option.

 

[cr@zydude]

I'm considering Rain now but there website is under maintenance.

How easy is it to cancel? I assume 1 month notice as it's sim only.

I'm looking at the R250 off peak option, with either Telkom or Cell C for peak data.

How does Rain check that you are a "mobile user"? I plan to put the sim in my Huawei B315.

My hope is to get Rain at R250 and then a new Telkom 20gb deal at R250 per month for a total of R500. I'm also considering Cell C's R2 000 for 200gb for 365 days and then buying an extra router. It sounds lazy but I don't feel like changing sim cards twice a day.

 

[backstreetboy]

I'm considering Rain now but there website is under maintenance.

Working fine here...

 

[Speedster]

I'm considering Rain now but there website is under maintenance.

How easy is it to cancel? I assume 1 month notice as it's sim only.

I'm looking at the R250 off peak option, with either Telkom or Cell C for peak data.

How does Rain check that you are a "mobile user"? I plan to put the sim in my Huawei B315.

My hope is to get Rain at R250 and then a new Telkom 20gb deal at R250 per month for a total of R500. I'm also considering Cell C's R2 000 for 200gb for 365 days and then buying an extra router. It sounds lazy but I don't feel like changing sim cards twice a day.

No need to swop sim cards. It's pretty easy to set up a router to switch between accounts. You will need two LTE routers though

 

[cr@zydude]

Working fine here...

It was giving me problems this morning, but it works now. Their faq section answered most of my questions.

I doubt that I will use close to a terabyte, which seems to be where they crack down.

 

[d7e7r7]

Other things to consider (learned this from personal experience):
1. The simple routers (including MiFi) are not high performance. Wifi strength/speed will be affected, and LTE reception gets impacted unless you're very close to a tower.
Creating a multi-router gateway and switching off WiFi on the gateway routers made a big difference.
2. An external antenna makes a big difference, especially on latency (i.e. "ping", so gaming is improved). My latency dropped from 60ms to 16 ms with an antenna. UL and DL speeds also improved measurably.

What external antenna did you use? What router can it be used with?

What did your upload and download speeds change from and change to?

You mention "simple routers", which are these and which ones are likely to get better signal and speeds?

 

[lotus123]

What external antenna did you use? What router can it be used with?

What did your upload and download speeds change from and change to?

You mention "simple routers", which are these and which ones are likely to get better signal and speeds?

Poynting XPOL-6 - it can be used with any router that has an external antenna connector (actually it's a dual antenna, and the Huawei B315 has 2 external ports). Just check what connector type is on the router and make sure that it's the same as the antenna's (I think Poynting also sells "pigtails" to convert to different types).

IIRC the speeds went from:
Download - 3Mbps improved to about 20mbps (and something changed recently on the towers here, now getting 55mbps at night)
Upload- 3mpbs improved to 20mbps (36mbps on a good day)

When I say "simple" routers I mean the budget kind - less that R1.5k, such as the Huawei B315. The user interface (on mine) is really basic and doesn't even give cell info. More importantly they have very little RAM/ROM and puny processors, so loading them up with tasks like DHCP and WiFi really seems to slow them down. Splitting those tasks across a mesh of 4 routers seems to have taken the load off the LTE routers, and they appear to perform better as simple gateways.