Aircard Meets Cradlepoint: A Marriage Made in Heaven

If you're like a lot of people who rely on an Aircard to get online, you may be wishing it would allow you to connect multiple computers to the web at one time. Using more than one computer with an Aircard has not been possible, not easily anyway, until recently.

That's when the Cradle Point or mobile broadband router came along. If you know someone who has high-speed internet, either through DSL or a cable connection, you may have noticed that they can set up wifi in their house and connect multiple computers or other devices to the internet at once. My brother has this option and he uses a wifi router to allow him and his wife to both surf the net from anywhere in the house at the same time. But this was not an option for people with an aircard until cradlepoints came along.

A Cradlepoint is basically a router designed just for aircards. The device is actually called a 3G mobile broadband router, and Cradlepoint is a copyrighted name of a company that produces these routers, but most people call all 3G routers by this title.

Instead of plugging your aircard into one computer, you plug the aircard into the Cradlepoint, and it creates a wifi signal that allows any wifi enabled computer in the area to connect to the internet through the aircard. Amazing, huh?

I live in a rural area, and I never thought I would have a fast internet connection, let alone a wifi network in my home. Aircards made it possible for folks in the country to get a fast internet connection, and now mobile broadband routers are making wifi a reality for people in rural areas. This is also true for people who travel a lot, live in an RV, or need a back up in case other web connections go down.

Just like regular wireless routers, the 3G version, a Cradlepoint, has security features to protect your computers and information from snoopers and hackers. It's important to use these features if you don't want other people to have access to your network. Most mobile broadband routers use a firewall or double firewalls to provide protection. They also use virtual private network technology (VPN).

There is also at least one benefit of using an aircard and cradlepoint over the use of a traditional wireless router. They are very mobile. You can take these two devices to any place that has cell phone connectivity and a power source (either a battery or electricity) and use them to connect to the web. Like I said before, this is very handy for travelers, and RVers.

There are also versions of this technology like Verizon's MiFi that combine a cradlepoint and an aircard into one device. The Mi-Fi is a pocket device that does the same thing as the two devices combined. However, it only allows a few computers or devices to be networked. Other 3G mobile routers allow 10 or more devices to connect, though I imagine they each would have a slow connection, since they would all have to share the Aircard's 3G signal.

Aircards revolutionized access to the internet for people all over the world. Now, Cradlepoints and other 3G mobile wifi routers are revolutionizing wireless networking for a lot of Aircard users.