Before going the hotspot route, do a speedtest check to make sure you are getting good speed and decent pings on your phone first.

As long as you have a pretty good signal, it should be fine/great for stuff like netflix streaming and such.

Online games will have higher pings than a decent wired connection.

As for range extenders.. they pretty much suck for the most part unless you get a really nice one.. such as this more expensive one from TPLink https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?I … 00018-_-Product
1. They will increase ping times
2. They have very bad reliability issues. I tried a few different ones that weren't cheap a couple years ago and they were always having issues with the connection dying, losing connection with the wireless router, etc.
3. Most of them you have to hook up to a computer to do the initial configuration which is a huge pain, and will be even more of a pain if you are using a connection that not always going to be there.. such as a cell phone. Good luck with with getting them to reconnect once the cell phone is back in range.

The best setup, IMO, for hotspot access is:
1. If you want to share the hotspot with more than one device, hotspot your phone to one computer with USB 2.0 or higher and then share that connection out via a wired connection to your router.
2. If you only need to hotpsot to one device, then the best is still going to be USB 2.0 or higher, but wireless will work as well although the pings will be a bit higher.

I've used it on my phones at spots where either the Wi-Fi never works, or there is no Wi-Fi. I did that in the U.P. (Michigan) for my laptop since the spot we were at didn't have Wi-Fi as they were just starting that, and in another state where their Wi-Fi worked once in a blue moon (in a hotel), and it does work pretty well, it just depends on your signal strength and where you live or go to (closer to the towers, the better). Just so you know, if you have a certain amount of capacity per month on your data plan, don't use too much as streaming takes a whole heck of a lot, same with downloading updates or software, including gaming.

I've used cell as my only Internet since 2003 except for starting in 2017 when my job turned to work from home so I had to get home Internet since I was having issues with work VPN over cell. Using the socks server and proxifier has been a relatively recent addition. (Past 2 years)

Android phone. No need to be rooted.
Openvpn to Private Internet Access VPN
Socks Server Ultimate App

Sabrent Wi-Fi Range Extender
This is used to pair with the hotspot on your phone.
Ethernet side connects to your router.

On all the computers in the house I use proxifier to intercept all traffic on the computer that doesn't support SOCKS and forward to socks server. Obviously this doesn't work for non-computer devices.

I live alone so won't have a multitude of devices, just want to be able to get Netflix or Hulu on my tv. Tried a speedtest and the phone only tops out at 5 mps so maybe it's all moot, figure I'll need at least 10 mps for smooth play. Oh well it was a thought, just gonna have to move to Huntsville.

buckeye wrote:

I live alone so won't have a multitude of devices, just want to be able to get Netflix or Hulu on my tv. Tried a speedtest and the phone only tops out at 5 mps so maybe it's all moot, figure I'll need at least 10 mps for smooth play. Oh well it was a thought, just gonna have to move to Huntsville.

On my 50Mbps connection, Netflix typically uses only about 4Mbps, so your connection may work as long as you're not doing any other surfing while watching Netflix.

Yeah my parents can stream on barely 2 meg DSL at 480p so at 4-5 720p-1080p may be workable if it's just you and not doing anything else intensive with the Internet while streaming. I'm probably going to push them to purchase a combine Cell wifi router for their house since their DSL will never improve. Only issue is data caps which they'll need to check regularly.

Check the coverage diagrams for all the different cell providers. If you find a good one then pickup a wifi hotspot for testing purposes or if you know anyone in the area using a different provider have them test.