Original post by John Franklin on the OCC FB page with discussion pasted below.

John Franklin: Does anyone have any experience with Mailasail 's Red Box router? It is the most temperamental and frustrating bunch of useless electronics I have ever come across. If it hadn 't cost me more than £500 I would have thrown it overboard long ago.

Paul O 'Brien: Go on do it , throw it overboard life is to short for the frustration

Peter Whatley: Hi John we use a Red Port router from Global Marine Net (GMN ) together with XGate software. It 's simple, reliable, effective and good value. I believe it is all the things the the Red Box is not! I know you are not alone with your frustrations.

Sue Kelly: We also have a Red Port router from GMN & very happy with it. We were the winners in selling our Mailasail Red Box for £70 (after puchasing it for £500) on eBay.

Peter Mills: We have Iridium GO.on trial. Not yet sure it 's what I expected but others swear by them
Good for SMS text. Very slow for data and you have to remember that Satcom calls via it are Simplex and the distant destinations tell us that we sound like our head is in a bucket.

Phillip Smith: I wish we had seen these comments about the Mailasail Red Box a few months ago. We had one sent out to us here in Australia a few months ago at significantly more than £500 and it has proved to be virtually useless. The router needs regular rebooting; ...See more

John Franklin: Sorry, Philip. I should have posted this last year when my troubles began.

Phillip Smith: Please don 't feel responsible John. We clearly didn 't do enough pre purchase research. Let 's hope that the forum topic generates some positive assistance for those of us still struggling to get our units working properly.
Perhaps a gentle word in Ed Wildgoose 's ear that the performance of some of his equipment is generating discussion on an OCC forum might produce some results.

Christine Lyttle: No don 't throw it away - get in touch. We finally conquered it to great effect!!

Richard Gurney: Hi Christine. We too have a Red Box. It constantly loses the wifi bat. Spoke to Ed at mailasail who suggested fitting a usb hub between the wifi bat and the redbox-that didn 't work! Any ideas??

John Franklin: Ed told us exactly the same! We did it and there was no improvement.

Frank Hatfull: We get our Red Box router to work well for us......but....... My degree is in IT and I understand the stuff......and we don 't use it for Sat Phone.

John Franklin: Frank, my degree is in chemical engineering and I understand pipes, pumps and valves. All we want this thing to do is act as an on-board router when connected to a WiFi antenna so that we can use iPads etc on board. We have Mailasail 's Bat antenna, which works and does seem to perform well. I think all I am missing is a 15 year-old.

Elaine Hazell: We have the red box too and will join the discussion forum. Impressed by the service US => Sweden!

Christine Lyle: Our experience is in the Once we started plugging either the bat or a data sim in a dongle into the usb hub things improved dramatically. For the last two years we have almost abandoned the bat and just put local sims into the dongle which then works with all our appliances. We have never used it with the iridium.

Peter Whatley: John you have raised an interesting and rather poignant topic but what it highlights (other than the Red box being a dubious bit of kit) is the tremendous knowledge base from the members of the OCC from which we all benefit. I 'm glad Simon posted it to the Forum.