In the Press: “The Miri X510 Router in Depth” (Technologies for Worship Magazine)

Originally published in the January 2025 issue of Technologies for Worship Magazine.

Your live streams are crucial for engaging and connecting with your online followers who can’t attend your services in person. But even the most compelling and inspiring content will fall flat if your internet connection isn’t stable enough and fast enough to deliver it consistently to your distribution platforms and congregation.

Consider these scenarios:

Scenario #1: imagine that it's Sunday morning, and your worship leader is giving one of his most impactful sermons ever. You find yourself unable to monitor your live stream, and realize that the internet connection to your church has gone down. It’s not just your monitoring of the stream that has failed, it’s the stream itself. Whether it's a random outage or poorly timed weekend maintenance by your internet service provider doesn't matter -- you have no way to get your live production to your streaming platform for distribution to your audience. You try to use your smartphone's hotspot as an emergency backup, but you only have one bar of service in your building, and Wi-Fi congestion in your packed sanctuary makes the hotspot's performance even worse.

Scenario #2: your church is hosting an outdoor event that you want to livestream to your congregation. There’s no wired connectivity nor public Wi-Fi available, so you’re dependent on your cellular hotspot. But when you arrive at the location, you discover that cellular performance with your carrier is much worse than expected because of local terrain – not enough to sustain even a 3Mbps stream, let alone the high-quality 1080p stream you intended to achieve.

Unfortunately, most of us don't need to imagine what it feels like to be in these situations. If you’ve been doing live production long enough, at least one of these issues has almost certainly happened to you at least once. And internet outages will almost inevitably happen again.

Stability + Speed for your Streams

Miri Technologies has a powerful solution to ensure reliable, high-speed internet connectivity: the Miri X510 dual-cellular bonding router.

Integrating channel bonding technology from partner Speedify, the Miri X510 can combine Wi-Fi, Ethernet, satellite (such as Starlink) and mobile data connections into one highly resilient link to enable faster speeds and robust reliability. Automatic failover ensures seamless connectivity even if one internet service provider fails, while the ability to bond 4G LTE and 5G helps overcome network congestion in crowded venues.

The router can bond up to seven direct connections including integrated 5G and 4G modems; two RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet ports; Wi-Fi 6 connectivity; and two USB ports for optional modems.

SIMs are not included for the 4G and 5G modems, so you can choose your preferred carrier. Of course we’d recommend getting SIM cards from two different carriers, so if one carrier network goes down, the other one is still available for the router to use. The ability to bond 4G LTE and 5G also helps overcome network congestion in crowded venues.

Bandwidth can be increased even further with Speedify’s unique Pair & Share function, which lets the router share data connections from up to 20 mobile devices on the same network via the Speedify app. If you’re coming up short of the upload speed you need for your stream, your volunteers – or members of your congregation – can simply install the Speedify app on their smartphones and connect to your network to share their data connectivity and contribute to the router’s overall internet performance. By combining the X510’s seven direct connections with support for up to 20 Pair & Share devices, you can effectively combine up to 27 internet links to maximize performance.

Further reinforcing the X510’s suitability for portable uses like on-location video production, the X510 has a compact form factor and features two slots for optional, hot-swappable NP-F batteries – the same type of batteries producers may already be using for some of their cameras.

Streaming and More

Unlike dedicated video contribution systems that may also bond connections, the Miri X510 is not limited to delivering video and audio and is not tied to any particular codec or streaming protocol. It supports any type of data, from images, PowerPoint documents and social media posts to live streams created by a separate encoder in any current or future format. Every device on your church’s production network can take advantage of the router’s bonded connection – not just the outgoing stream, but for your team monitoring your website and streaming platforms, responding to social media comments, tracking donations and more.

Of course, live streaming – particularly from remote locations – is the most demanding use case because of its high bandwidth and near-real-time nature. The Miri X510 was engineered specifically to meet these rigorous requirements, and the specific needs of houses of worship were front of mind throughout the process. Miri Technologies’ CTO and co-founder Ryan Brenneman has volunteered or served on staff as a technical director at his churches for over eight years.

“I know firsthand what it’s like to face internet connectivity challenges during your Sunday stream, and it can be a helpless feeling for the technical director,” said Brenneman. “Even if your stream only goes down for a brief period, your online followers may not come back and try again until the next week – if at all. The Miri X510 provides the resilience needed to prevent such disruptions while also overcoming the poor internet performance that many churches suffer, particularly in rural areas.”

Powerful Partnership

As explained above, the Miri X510 is powered by Speedify technology. Like all network bonding solutions, the combined link connects to a bonding server before data is delivered to its destination. Speedify has server locations around the world, including 15 across the United States and Canada.

A Speedify subscription is required for bonding. The first three months are included free with each Miri X510 router, after which customers can subscribe on a monthly or annual basis.