NETGEAR 4G LTE Broadband Modem (LM1200) – Use LTE as a Primary Internet Connection or Failover Solution for Always-On WiFi Certified with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon

The media could not be loaded. So first I'm fully off grid out here, the nearest utility is a mile or more down the road and that's just power and a phone line. Everything I have comes through an larger/upgraded antenna whether it be TV, FM, LTE, ham radio. So I know an thing or too about how to get the most out of the signals in the air around you.Pros:PriceWall mountable(86mm hole spacing)SmallEasy web interfaceEasy setupExternal ant ports if neededCons:-Uses USB C as a power source. (Needs a wall adapter vice a normal 12volt source like most routers and my booster, ideally I would wire it directly to my campers 12 volt system which remains powered if ACpower to the camper is lost.)-Internal antenna doesn't do well in low signal environments.-you must connect directly to it via Ethernet to view the settings menu on a computer. Can't connect from PC>router>lm1200. Has to be PC>LM1200It just happened that I was on a hill that can just about get decent service from band 13 LTE on a tower 5km away from me even know the cell tower antenna barely faces my direction. So I got a booster that can boost that band. All good. Great useable speed from my phones hotspot buuuttt I needed a wired connection, I wanted Ethernet for some equipment I have so enter the lm1200 Netgear cell booster. Very cheap at 110 dollars. Picked it up from an Amazon locker in town and walked right into Verizon store without even taking it out of the box. They scanned the IMEI number and confirmed that they could probably set up a SIM card even though he had no idea what I had in my hand and had never done it before. Probably 5 minutes later we were powering up the unit with a new SIM card and it was online 2 minutes later after initializing a connection. I ran home and powered it back up and bam, connected to cell tower(via my booster) and I ran a temp line directly to my PC and it worked perfect. Pings range from 40-100ms for me so you ain't gonna game on this bad boy but anything else not time sensitive will do fine. So in my video you see I run it into a normal wifi router, this allows me to have multiple ethernet ports for multiple things and it allows me to have both a 2.4 and 5.0 Wi-Fi band like a standard household would, which allows visitors without cell service to still connect to something. The same thing that you would do if you went to a friend's house and you didn't have cell phone service. So my first impression is that the internal antenna of the LM 1200 is fairly terrible because I can only get up to around 10 megabytes per second when testing(in my signal environment), I thought about getting a splitter and connecting the TS9 ports on the back of this directly to the same antenna that my cell phone booster uses, but I'm willing to try the $7 whip antennas you can buy for this that just plug right into the back and I'll update this and let you know how much speed I get just by adding those two little whip antennas. If those don't work, they sell a coax type f to ts-9 splitter that I can use to connect this lm1200 directly to my cell phone booster antenna you see in my video.So the data for the nerdy people:-I can get near full bars which means -70db signal on my pixel 6 when located at the same spot as this product and this product gets 70 db(viewed on the web portal)- With my cell booster OFF, I get about -115db on my phone and -115 on this device.-So the cheap Amazon booster works great when set up properly even with stock antennas.That translated to about 20-30 down and 5-10 up on my phone using the boosted LTE.-BUT when doing speed test on my computer when using this product I only get around 6 down and 2-5 up at the time of testingThese speeds change with network/tower traffic of course but I think its interesting that the speeds can be so different from 2 devices that are using the same carrier and cell band and have about the same signal strength so I'm going to call my carrier and present this data as i suspect they are messing with my speeds.Other details, 70 bucks added on my bill for this extra "line" and 150gb of data...

I am not tech savvy. Here is my experience.We live rural and have few options for internet. FirstNet/ATT works well at our house. For 3 years we used a tablet as a hotspot for household internet. It was much faster than Hughes net and cheaper. However average download speeds were around 3-4 mbps, the signal quality was 90-110 dbs, and the connection was unreliable requiring moving the tablet or rebooting it daily.I tried a cheap router first but got scared off by the Chinese apps. Then tried this router. It did not work with my Sim card. I went to FirstNet and they said to call tech support for FirstNet.I stayed in the store and called them. They eventually created a new Sim card that was internet only and not whatever was in my tablet. The router worked. Being in the store worked well as they were on speaker with the staff there and could iron out technical issues beyond my skill.Its been about a month. Download speeds are 15-80 mbps. Signal strength is about -45 dbs. Reliability is much better and only requiring resetting about once a week. I have added wifi antennas. Not sure if they helped. This did not change my plan and I remain out of contract for the same price as before.Very pleased.

Infrastructure engineer here (I work with large-scale computer networks and servers) so I apologize in advance that some of the terminology used may be beyond layman's terms. Firstly, I should state that my "Wifi signal" rating in this review was reflective of the LTE wireless connectivity for this device. It has no other wireless connectivity. I am using the LTE modem with an external dual-interface antenna, and the signal is still terrible when compared to the USB LTE modem this replaced, from the same location, using the same antenna. Secondly, I will state that I am not utilizing or depending on the "LTE fail-over" functionality of this device at all, it is only being used to supply a second internet connection to a second WAN on my firewall which is handling the fail-over itself.I am writing this review after having spoken with Netgear support at length regarding the concerns I will describe below. Needless to say, their first "answer" for my concerns was that "this is a home product, not a business product." To explain why I purchased this product, it was meant to replace my existing, soon to be retired Sprint EVDO Netgear LTE modem that was already connected through USB to my firewall to provide LTE fail-over in case of loss of connection through my primary internet. Yes, with Sprint having been purchased by T-Mobile, it was decided they would retire the Sprint EVDO network in favor of the GSM network. As such, my novel solution (since there appear to be no LTE USB modems for my current carrier) was to purchase the LM1200 and attach it to a data-only SIM on my wireless account.A simple enough solution in theory, or so I thought. But that was before I received, updated, and configured my LM1200. Given that the LM1200 is designed to be placed in front of your router/firewall, I would have expected the LM1200 to have the ability to configure the web GUI to use HTTPS rather than the HTTP that it operates in (you cannot). I also would have expected the ability to disable web GUI access from the LTE and WAN interfaces, you know, to prevent people from logging into the LTE modem management interface from the public internet. I think the chat transcript from my Netgear support sums this up the best:Bradley F: May I ask what is the purpose of enabling https only?Me: To prevent my configurations and credentials from being passed to or from the device in clear/plain text?Bradley F: I see, for home modem they are only with Http and for prevention, you must keep your credentials as secret as possibleBradley F: We do not have business equivalent for a LTE modemMe: Really. What is the solution then for a business who needs an LTE modem to place on a secondary WAN interface of a firewall for fail-over?Bradley F: We only have BR200/BR500 and Orbi Pro NOTE: These are firewalls, and do not list LTE connectivity as options.Me: If I tried to install this product in that way for a business, I would get fired if they understood how insecure it is!Bradley F: but those are already routersMe: Yes, and I need specifically an LTE modem to augment the business-class firewall I already have.Bradley F: Unfortunately we don't have business LTE modemsMe: Wow...Bradley F: Sorry about thatLet me explain it to you another way. You can login to the LM1200 device using its public IP address assigned to the WAN or LTE interfaces. Because the LM1200 uses HTTP instead of HTTPS, data sent to or from the LM1200 is not encrypted. When you login to the LM1200 from anywhere, the interface is presented entirely in HTTP, meaning your config and password are sent in plain text (clear text), and could potentially be "sniffed" by anyone who is also on the same . I don't think you will be able to see my image names when this review is posted, but there will be only a few. Look for the one that is a list of public IP addresses. That image shows a network scan of the /24 subnet to which my public IP address belonged. Ideally, you should not be able to scan for and find the addresses of other devices on your ISP's network, but in my case, you could. This also means others on the same network can scan/monitor you and possibly capture your credentials when you enter them. "Screen Shot 11-03-21 at 04.47 PM.PNG"I feel, given their choice to make the user interface HTTP, that users should be able to disable or enable the ability to login from any interfaces to prevent such snooping. It is bad enough that Netgear has already saved invaders the trouble of guessing a username (there is none, only a password). As an edge device, the LM1200 should have been released with security in mind, regardless of being a "home" product. I myself have not encountered a network device that offered only HTTP for its configuration interface since the early 2000s. Here we are in 2021 with Netgear's latest offering for an LTE modem, and it appears to have been designed with less security in mind than a Chinese government-issued web chat client. Is it that Netgear doesn't think home users are subject to hackers, script kiddies, and identitiy theft? I assure you, they are, and Netgear should have better security on this from the start.I would also point out that there are some concerning entries in the config file if saved from the LM1200. There is only one account on the device so far as I was able to discern from the web interface. However, even though I changed that one password on my device, there existed still the following line stored in the unencrypted config. Take that as you will:"webd.ownerPassword=1234"As such, until Netgear adds the ability to enable an HTTPS user interface (as they have on mose of their other home/business firewalls and routers) and the ability to limit or disable login access to the LM1200, I cannot in good conscience advise any home or business user to purchase or use this LTE modem as it now exists. Even if a user also intend to place the modem behind another firewall, it would only protect you from would-be hackers for your Ethernet WAN interface (and only while that WAN interface is active). There is no way to protect yourself on the LTE modem public interface!.My device details are listed below, and I will revise this review should Netgear correct these security concerns.Firmware Version: EC25AFFDR07A09M4GApp Version: NTG9X07C_20.06.09.00Web App Version: LM1200-HDATA_03.03.103.201Hardware Version: 1.02021-11-15 Addendum, I had asked the question of the manufacturer, "Will Netgear allow users to prevent login from public ip interface? since the gui is only http, this is a security concern. looking for mfg answer." and received the reply back same day, "Remote access to the modem is off by default, so the admin Gui would not be accessible from the public IP address."I am not entirely sure how to respond to the manufacturer's reply, but I have some screenshots (see attached) from my own modem that would indicate remote management IS possible from the public IP on the LTE interface. I did nothing that I know of to enable this, and if there is an undocumented way to disable it, I would really like to know how.