4g and 4g+ Routers (Cat 3 to Cat 6 and Beyond)

Hi Folks

We have had a 3g/HSPA Router thread here for years - think it is time that we have a 4g and 4g+ Router Thread with the same purpose so as to help people find good routers and solve issues in one place.

So feel free to kick start it :P

Personally find the b593-s22 a fine 4g cat 3 router with good consistent 20-40 meg speeds on three bars of signal.

Tommy Lagahan

Funny enough I just ordered a Huawei E5186 LTE-A router there last night to replace my dieing E3276s-150 dongle.
Will be interesting to see if it gives me any performance improvement, currently maxing out at about 36Mbit down 20Mbit up in wee hours of the morning, about 6-10Mbit down and 15 up at peak hours.
As far as I can guess from the tower I'm pointing it at out me window, the Comreg siteviewer and Google Earth's distance measuring I'm about 9KM from the mast, probably only getting it because I've clear LOS.
Pretty sure some of the chips are starting to burn out like what happened all my dongles the last few years, cut out 4 times yesterday and crashed MDMA and the Windows RNDIS drivers.
Pumping far too much data through the things with the all you can eat Three plan lol!

Will be hooking it up to 2x Poynting LPDA 0092s as well when it gets here, have to get the whole lot mounted on the wall before the modem comes on Monday.
Will let yis know how I get on!

Tommy Lagahan

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Funny enough I just ordered a Huawei E5186 LTE-A router there last night to replace my dieing E3276s-150 dongle.
Will be interesting to see if it gives me any performance improvement, currently maxing out at about 36Mbit down 20Mbit up in wee hours of the morning, about 6-10Mbit down and 15 up at peak hours.
As far as I can guess from the tower I'm pointing it at out me window, the Comreg siteviewer and Google Earth's distance measuring I'm about 9KM from the mast, probably only getting it because I've clear LOS.
Pretty sure some of the chips are starting to burn out like what happened all my dongles the last few years, cut out 4 times yesterday and crashed MDMA and the Windows RNDIS drivers.
Pumping far too much data through the things with the all you can eat Three plan lol!

Will be hooking it up to 2x Poynting LPDA 0092s as well when it gets here, have to get the whole lot mounted on the wall before the modem comes on Monday.
Will let yis know how I get on!

A cat 6 router eh? Nice future proofing with that - do let us know what kind of speeds you are getting previous and post antenna installation

How much did it cost to get that router may I ask? And are they available in Ireland?

Tommy Lagahan

warlikedave wrote: »

A cat 6 router eh? Nice future proofing with that - do let us know what kind of speeds you are getting previous and post antenna installation

How much did it cost to get that router may I ask? And are they available in Ireland?

Aye, it'll probably be a long, long time before Three can reach Cat 6, I'm just getting it because its the newest one on the market and supposed to be the successor to the B593.
I grabbed it from Amazon unlocked outta the box: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-Unlocked-Wireless-Mobile-Router/dp/B018TO4I9W?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

200 quid is hefty, but I've thrown that much cash at internet connections here now I might as well go all in. 500 quids worth give or take with the antennas.

If Eir said tomorrow I could have eFibre for 10 grand I'd probably pay it in a blink of an eye lol.

Tommy Lagahan

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Aye, it'll probably be a long, long time before Three can reach Cat 6, I'm just getting it because its the newest one on the market and supposed to be the successor to the B593.
I grabbed it from Amazon unlocked outta the box: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-Unlocked-Wireless-Mobile-Router/dp/B018TO4I9W?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

200 quid is hefty, but I've thrown that much cash at internet connections here now I might as well go all in. 500 quids worth give or take with the antennas.

If Eir said tomorrow I could have eFibre for 10 grand I'd probably pay it in a blink of an eye lol.

Aye Ive purchased that this evening since I got paid lol plus to be honest with the 20euro a month connection I have it will pay itself back within a year easily. Even on cat 4 which three are rolling out this year there should be some improvement Id say. It even comes with two external antennas so that's a really nice bonus considering the cost to buy those antennas separately on the market.

At least I will be future proofed with this purchase for the next few years as well so. hopefully it is a good successor to the b593-s22.

Tommy Lagahan

Got the router today lads, turns out there's a microsim slot rather than a minisim, had to pick up a pay as you go micro sim from Vodafone there to test this out til I get to the Three shop in Letterkenny tomorrow to get my sim changed. The router automatically configured the APN for the Vodafone sim and connected right away, pretty handy!

So there's going to be a bit of an information dump here, I'm comparing a good few things at once; 2 modems and 2 different antenna setups.
Antennas:
Poynting XPOL-A002 (shortened cables to reduce loss)
Poynting A-LPDA-0092: 2 of them bolted to the wall outside: http://imgur.com/4q2nXjR

E3276s :
Currently this is what this Frankenstein contraption looks like: http://imgur.com/qOyX5cx
No antenna: RSRQ: -9dB RSRP: -90dBm RSSI: -79dBm SINR: NULL* Down: 10.64Mbit Up: 20.38Mbit Ping: 25ms
XPOL-A002: RSRQ: -9dB RSRP: -78dBm RSSI: -61dBm SINR: NULL* Down: 15.14Mbit Up: 19.44Mbit Ping: 24ms
LPDA-0092: RSRQ: -8dB RSRP: -75dBm RSSI: -57dBm SINR: NULL* Down: 24.71Mbit Up: 21.17Mbit Ping: 24ms

*(MDMA cant read the SINR on the e3276s)

E5186 :
On the window where the E3276 used to live: http://imgur.com/G3lONCE
No antennas: RSRQ: -9dB RSRP: -82dBm RSSI: -67dBm SINR: 7dB Down: 14.62Mbit Up: 20.76Mbit Ping: 29ms
LPDA-0092: RSRQ: -8dB RSRP: -72dBm RSSI: -57dBm SINR: 9dB Down: 24.78Mbit Up: 21.60Mbit Ping: 29ms
(Cables are too short on the A002 to fit the jacks on the back)

Only took 1 test for each setup since there's a 7GB data cap on this Vodafone sim and I want to get some gaming done tonight.
I'll do more and get a better gauge of Three if yous want.

Right off the bat on Vodafone its as good as the E3276s with the XPOL-A002 I was using, seems to handle low signal better than the dongle.
It also seems to be able to edge out a bit more RSRP from the 0092s, though both modems do really well with them anyway. Probably gets the extra power from not having to go through those puny SMA-CRC9 pigtails.
Not sure why the ping is a bit higher on the E5186 but it looks to be a lot more consistent on idle than with the USB dongle. Gaming will be a good test of it later.

It feels a good bit snappier to browse on, probably something to do with not having to go through a USB modem shared through a laptop across 30m of cat6 to the PC....
The main differences in speeds I'm expecting is on Three's network, its always hopping around in signal quality and speeds are all over the place depending on the time of day. Max speed I registered on Three with the USB dongle and XPOL-A002 was 36Mbit at about 4AM, will be interesting to see if that increases when I get the Three sim sorted out. Ill post back here when I do, probably on Wednesday.

Pretty happy with it overall so far, haven't tested my primary downloading SIM on it yet and its already a big improvement, though I am moving to bigger antennas today as well. Main thing is not having my laptop sitting sucking up juice all day to share the connection to my work PC. That and not being an eyesore on my window that constantly overheats and cuts out.
The android HiLink app is pretty handy to keep an eye on bandwidth usage as well.
Here's a zip of screenshots of the UI as well: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3hrnq9bl1vde116/E5186%20Interface.zip?dl=0

Tommy Lagahan

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Got the router today lads, turns out there's a microsim slot rather than a minisim, had to pick up a pay as you go micro sim from Vodafone there to test this out til I get to the Three shop in Letterkenny tomorrow to get my sim changed. The router automatically configured the APN for the Vodafone sim and connected right away, pretty handy!

So there's going to be a bit of an information dump here, I'm comparing a good few things at once; 2 modems and 2 different antenna setups.
Antennas:
Poynting XPOL-A002 (shortened cables to reduce loss)
Poynting A-LPDA-0092: 2 of them bolted to the wall outside: http://imgur.com/4q2nXjR

E3276s :
Currently this is what this Frankenstein contraption looks like: http://imgur.com/qOyX5cx
No antenna: RSRQ: -9dB RSRP: -90dBm RSSI: -79dBm SINR: NULL* Down: 10.64Mbit Up: 20.38Mbit Ping: 25ms
XPOL-A002: RSRQ: -9dB RSRP: -78dBm RSSI: -61dBm SINR: NULL* Down: 15.14Mbit Up: 19.44Mbit Ping: 24ms
LPDA-0092: RSRQ: -8dB RSRP: -75dBm RSSI: -57dBm SINR: NULL* Down: 24.71Mbit Up: 21.17Mbit Ping: 24ms

*(MDMA cant read the SINR on the e3276s)

E5186 :
On the window where the E3276 used to live: http://imgur.com/G3lONCE
No antennas: RSRQ: -9dB RSRP: -82dBm RSSI: -67dBm SINR: 7dB Down: 14.62Mbit Up: 20.76Mbit Ping: 29ms
LPDA-0092: RSRQ: -8dB RSRP: -72dBm RSSI: -57dBm SINR: 9dB Down: 24.78Mbit Up: 21.60Mbit Ping: 29ms
(Cables are too short on the A002 to fit the jacks on the back)

Only took 1 test for each setup since there's a 7GB data cap on this Vodafone sim and I want to get some gaming done tonight.
I'll do more and get a better gauge of Three if yous want.

Right off the bat on Vodafone its as good as the E3276s with the XPOL-A002 I was using, seems to handle low signal better than the dongle.
It also seems to be able to edge out a bit more RSRP from the 0092s, though both modems do really well with them anyway. Probably gets the extra power from not having to go through those puny SMA-CRC9 pigtails.
Not sure why the ping is a bit higher on the E5186 but it looks to be a lot more consistent on idle than with the USB dongle. Gaming will be a good test of it later.

It feels a good bit snappier to browse on, probably something to do with not having to go through a USB modem shared through a laptop across 30m of cat6 to the PC....
The main differences in speeds I'm expecting is on Three's network, its always hopping around in signal quality and speeds are all over the place depending on the time of day. Max speed I registered on Three with the USB dongle and XPOL-A002 was 36Mbit at about 4AM, will be interesting to see if that increases when I get the Three sim sorted out. Ill post back here when I do, probably on Wednesday.

Pretty happy with it overall so far, haven't tested my primary downloading SIM on it yet and its already a big improvement, though I am moving to bigger antennas today as well. Main thing is not having my laptop sitting sucking up juice all day to share the connection to my work PC. That and not being an eyesore on my window that constantly overheats and cuts out.
The android HiLink app is pretty handy to keep an eye on bandwidth usage as well.
Here's a zip of screenshots of the UI as well: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3hrnq9bl1vde116/E5186%20Interface.zip?dl=0

Very nice mate - thank you for the full breakdown and setup - do let us know how you get on as you go.

Another article of interest regarding three and its deployment of 4g+

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/2016/03/23/three-4g-free-4g-plus-towns-list

ondafly

what a well timed thread ! I've been looking at getting a better internet solution for my parents place in the NW. I was trying to buy a b593-s22 this morning, but struggling to find one in stock. Lo and behold Tommy above points out the newer version in the E5186 so I've just snapped one up on amazon.

Hopefully up that way at the end of the month and look forward to seeing what I can do with it. It has to better than the current hotspot setup they use ! plus the wireless range on it was terrible.

Tommy Lagahan

Got the Three microsim today, good news and bad news unfortunately. Turns out this E5186 reports more information than the dongle did, or rather MDMA read from the dongle.
RSSI is very strong for both 3G and 4G on Three, -58dBm and -57dBm respectively however the SINR and EC/IO readings respectively are very very high.
Did some reading up on what all the different values mean and it comes down to crap tons of signal noise.
Getting between -7 and -12 EC/IO on 3G and similar SINR readings - wait a minute, actually just checked 4G again as I was doing the speedtests below and the SINR has changed to 2dB I'll be expecting it to spike back to -9 at peak.... Fast for now but ya never know with the contention on Three.
Houl on, its really feckin me about here, refreshing "view-source:http://192.168.8.1/api/device/signal" on Chrome here has the SINR going from +3dB to -7dB within seconds of eachother...... Really haven't a notion whats going on here lads.
First 2 tests I did on 4G with the Three sim plugged in were 10Mbit and 15Mbit down....

If I'm lucky its interference from the 3 cables coming from the LNB on the TV sattelite dish that the LPDA-0092s cables are routed next to through the wall - will drill a new hole for the antenna cables tomorrow since its bucketing the rain here today.

There is another tower that I might be able to just peak at over the hill behind the house; opposite direction to where the antennas are pointed currently. I pointed them at the mast I was using with the dongle but if I can get the one behind the hill its ~4.35KM away rather than ~9.23KM. Don't think the closer one has 4G activated yet, but there's a lot less houses within 4KM of it, the one far away has a whole valley of houses within LOS as ya's saw from the picture of the dongle in my last post - I'm just about 300ft higher up than most of them. I'd stick to 3G on it for the time being if it meant I got more consistency.

3G speedtest:


4G speedtest:


I think there's too many feckin towers here, dunno what one's fastest if I'm honest.
Over the last 6 years I've been picking up 8 different cellid's with MDMA. Will keep yas updated and will likely be back giving out at peak time around 7-10PM lol


Edit: forgot to mention, the router picks up the mast as O2 Ireland still and I have to enable roaming to use data on it.

Edit 2: ah here Three get yer crap together....



Edit 3 (sorry lol updating this as I go along): This router lets me refresh signal quality readings far faster than MDMA ever did with the dongle.

You can literally see the contention on Threes network in action as it happens; ya can see the SINR fluctuating from "excellent" to "poor" a couple of times a second during a speedtest.
No wonder I burnt out the dongle pumping heaps of gigs through it when it had to deal with this kind of crap!

Here's a video of the signal stats, speed, ping to boards during a speedtest with Three:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL3m22IMHjQ
And here's one on Vodafone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVxuadX2SZE
So as far as I've learned from this and assuming that I'm connecting to the two Three(O2) and Vodafone towers next to each other, 9KM is too far away for consistent speeds. Hope I can see that tower closer to me or I'll be putting the whole lot in a box on the hill.
Also to note here, the E5186 is handling all this extremely well; the dongle did much much worse under this kind of fluctuation (though I didn't know what was causing it at the time). I wouldn't even expect speeds this consistent with the signal the way it is.

Done some very preliminary tests thus far with the b593 vs the b5186 and I have found that using internal antenna on both.

1. Download speed on the b5186 can be up to 6mb slower than the b593
2. Upload is almost always halved on the b5186
3. Ping is excellent on both
4. 3 bars on both routers - service provider is three

b593 speeds (cat4):







b5186 speeds (cat6):







Now as far as I can conclude - the 4g+ network for three must not be active here as of yet and therefore am still on vanilla 4g - what is weird though is that could it be that the car4 router is better in getting performance out of a cat 4 network in comparison to a cat6 router on a cat4 network or is it that the internal antenna for the b5186 is not quite as good as the b593 cat4 dedicated antenna?

I have no detailed signal data yet or any external antennas so I may do some more experimentation and collect a lot more data.

Tommy Lagahan

Hmm, I might've jumped the gun getting the B5186.
First dedicated router setup I got so I figured I'd get the newest.
I wonder if Three have any specific network settings on their firmwares that would result in the speed differences, both my USB dongle and 5186 were unlocked buys from Amazon with vanilla Huawei firmware on them, haven't used a locked modem in a good while.

I got mine going off this thread here, none of them had mentioned lower speeds when I glanced through it. Same subforum has a thread for the B315s and B593 routers, as well as a thread on the Poynting antennas I got and the guy that made MDMA is on there.
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/686592-The-Huawei-E5186-LTE-A-discussion-thread

Oh and grab the signal stats with this: http://192.168.8.1/api/device/signal
Open it on chrome and view source to get the stats. Ya never know with the contention on Three, I got 30Mbit, 10Mbit and 20Mbit all within half an hour.

Tommy Lagahan

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Hmm, I might've jumped the gun getting the B5186.
First dedicated router setup I got so I figured I'd get the newest.
I wonder if Three have any specific network settings on their firmwares that would result in the speed differences, both my USB dongle and 5186 were unlocked buys from Amazon with vanilla Huawei firmware on them, haven't used a locked modem in a good while.

I got mine going off this thread here, none of them had mentioned lower speeds when I glanced through it. Same subforum has a thread for the B315s and B593 routers, as well as a thread on the Poynting antennas I got and the guy that made MDMA is on there.
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/686592-The-Huawei-E5186-LTE-A-discussion-thread

It could well be a case that the internal antenna is configured for duel band lte which is essentially what cat 6 is which could impact on its dedicated hardware/software when dealing with a single band lte signal. Its too hard to tell. The real test is when we will definitely have 4g+ in the area and then compare.

The one added bonus of the new router is that it ships with a 1gb lan port in comparison to the b593 100mb lan port so in terms of home networking - this router is a step ahead. In terms of overall functionality of the user interface though - i found it very limiting and certainly has less options for its more advanced hardware in comparison to the b593 user interface.

By the way - nice little signal tool very handy

Pre Speed Test

274 150535 -15dB -100dBm -71dBm 14dB 7
274 150535 -14dB -100dBm -67dBm 14dB 7
274 150535 -14dB -100dBm -69dBm 7dB 7

Speedtest

274 150535 -15dB -100dBm -69dBm 13dB 7
274 150535 -15dB -100dBm -69dBm 12dB 7
274 150535 -15dB -100dBm -69dBm 11dB 7
274 150535 -15dB -100dBm -69dBm 13dB 7



Post Speedtest

274 150535 -15dB -100dBm -69dBm 13dB 7
274 150535 -15dB -100dBm -69dBm 14dB 7

---

Pretty much identical thoughout this speedtest - moved the router again lol : 274 150535 -5dB -99dBm -69dBm 16dB 7

Tommy Lagahan

warlikedave wrote: »

Pre Speed Test

---

Pretty much identical thoughout this speedtest - moved the router again lol : 274 150535 -5dB -99dBm -69dBm 16dB 7

Nice, yer RSRP, RSSI are lower than mine but the quality and noise ratio are much better and more consistent. Ya went from "fair" RSRQ to excellent when ya moved it there lol! Do you know how far you are from the tower? I'm wondering if its cell conflict or just outright distance causing my quality to be so bad.

Couldn't get the signal tool from that thread on mybroadband working with mine, though my S3 mini has seen better days so it could be that.
Might throw one together for windows though if I dig out Visual studio and pass the XML from the router API back to a wee program. Seems you can refresh the information as much as you want so I could set it to do it every 100ms,250,500,1000 etc like a ping command. Would be handy for measuring signal when aiming it about the place. Might be something to work on (google and stackexchange how to do everything as usual) over the weekend.

Tommy Lagahan

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Nice, yer RSRP, RSSI are lower than mine but the quality and noise ratio are much better and more consistent. Ya went from "fair" RSRQ to excellent when ya moved it there lol! Do you know how far you are from the tower? I'm wondering if its cell conflict or just outright distance causing my quality to be so bad.

Couldn't get the signal tool from that thread on mybroadband working with mine, though my S3 mini has seen better days so it could be that.
Might throw one together for windows though if I dig out Visual studio and pass the XML from the router API back to a wee program. Seems you can refresh the information as much as you want so I could set it to do it every 100ms,250,500,1000 etc like a ping command. Would be handy for measuring signal when aiming it about the place. Might be something to work on (google and stackexchange how to do everything as usual) over the weekend.

Speeds took a nose dive after I moved it though which is a shame - I am about 4km from the mast. I have the exact cell ID thanks to comreg

http://www.askcomreg.ie/mobile/siteviewer.273.LE.asp

It seems that I get better speeds on the lower quality connection what makes no sense at all.

Tommy Lagahan

warlikedave wrote: »

Speeds took a nose dive after I moved it though which is a shame - I am about 2 to 2.5 miles from the mast. I have the exact cell ID thanks to comreg

http://www.askcomreg.ie/mobile/siteviewer.273.LE.asp

Whereabouts on the siteviewer did you get your cellID? None of the site IDs nearby me ever matched what MDMA reported from the modems or what this router is reporting.

Tommy Lagahan

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Whereabouts on the siteviewer did you get your cellID? None of the site IDs nearby me ever matched what MDMA reported from the modems or what this router is reporting.

I don't know about external services and their IDs but I asked three a few years ago where i latch onto - then I use this site to monitor status and capabilities of the cell that I am latched onto. Most cells on this site also provide EIRP range and antenna gain when you click on the little envelope as well but in this case three didnt provide any of that data

[Removed Image] - please see attachment

I find steam a great way to test speed stability along side a continuous ping test via command prompt as well

Tommy Lagahan

warlikedave wrote: »

I don't know about external services and their IDs but I asked three a few years ago where i latch onto - then I use this site to monitor status and capabilities of the cell that I am latched onto. Most cells on this site also provide EIRP range and antenna gain when you click on the little envelope as well but in this case three didnt provide any of that data

Hmm, seems Three have neglected to fill in the EIRP on a lot of the towers nearby lol. I have 20 sites within 10KM of me on siteviewer. The closest 7 are obscured LOS, what makes it even more irritating is the one thats 1.2KM away, was the first mast in the area to support LTE, but is obscured by about 60ft of hill. Aghhhhhh!

I'll see tomorrow if I can mount the antenna higher and try to get the ones 4KM away, theyre only obscured by about 5-10ft of hill and 3 trees. If it comes to it ill take the oul mans digger for a joyride and burn some 2 stroke in the chainsaw.

Yeah I also found Steam to actually be the most consistent tester of top speed and consistency. Must destroy any ISP side QoS or something.

Best of luck with your set up adjustments tomorrow do let us know how you get on

Tommy Lagahan

OK so I spun the antennas around to the other side of the house today, did a bit of choppin with the chainsaw.
Getting the highest speeds I've ever gotten on 3G at the moment:


These are the signal stats:
<sc>222</sc>
<cell_id>46151013</cell_id>
<rsrq></rsrq>
<rsrp></rsrp>
<rssi>-67dBm</rssi>
<sinr></sinr>
<rscp>-75dBm</rscp>
<ecio>-8dBm</ecio>
<mode>2</mode>

Upload is obviously quite down on 4G, the mast I'm picking up is an O2 one.
http://i.imgur.com/ZOXfGYA.png
Still don't have LOS with the tower annoyingly. Going to arrange with my father to borrow his digger tomorrow lol.
Only have about 3-4 foot of hill to remove to see the damn thing. Hope there isn't much rock to deal with, its only old grazing land for our cows anyway, was never worked much.
The only other options are putting the whole lot in some sort of box on the hill and running 100m of ethernet from it to the house, or mounting the antenna on the chimney where the North West Electronics dish is and watching the light show when there's electrical storms about.
The things ya do to get broadband in rural Ireland.
This operation has been about 6 years coming and I'm not settling for "good enough" anymore.
Interestingly the E3276 won't pick anything up at all when I plug it in now, must be getting confused with the networks.

TimHorton

4G went on 3 in Athlone area went off around 10 last night , 3G was perfect , It was back this morning , Possible an upgrade to 4G+ ?

editorsean

From the time Three did a fairly substantial upgrade last Tuesday, from what I can tell they have changed the network code of all their Three 3G masts to '272 02' (everywhere I checked around Co. Donegal), which shows up as O2 Ireland on phones and devices that display the original network name.

My OnePlus Two phone is affected, so everywhere I had Three with a 3G signal, it now shows as O2 Ireland with a 3G signal. The 4G masts still show the Three name:



Up until last Tuesday, it also listed "Hutchison 3G IReland limited 3G' in addition to its 4G listing (in its 4G areas). I had my phone set to WCDMA/LTE, so 2G networks were not listed above.

For anyone that can tweak their antenna early in the morning such as 7am on Saturday when network traffic is near idle, the following tip may be worth trying, especially if the signal readings are all over the place.

1. Set up your PC with Teamviewer (or other remote desktop) and connect your phone to show the desktop.
2. Open the Leaseweb test files page on the desktop and leave it sitting on this page.
3. Open up task manager in the Performance tab and bring up the WiFi or Ethernet screen, depending on how its connected.
4. With the antenna's fittings loosened, start a download of the 954MB test file from the remote desktop client on the phone and zoom into the traffic graph.
5. Start adjusting the antenna direction to achieve the highest sustained reading.
6. Stop the download and tighten the antenna in place.

The Leaseweb files are mainly intended for testing the sustained throughput of very fast connections (e.g. multi Gigabit) and peering performance between the user and Leaseweb's test server.

The advantage here is that it will max out pretty much any connection such as the following example from my workplace 30Mbps VDSL link:



Just note that this type of sustained download will eat a lot of data - 150MB per minute with 20Mbps sustained and well over 1GB minute once you enter 150+Mbps territory, but would be worth it if it means knowing that the antenna was aimed based on delivering the maximum throughput.

Tommy Lagahan

editorsean wrote: »

From the time Three did a fairly substantial upgrade last Tuesday, from what I can tell they have changed the network code of all their Three 3G masts to '272 02' (everywhere I checked around Co. Donegal), which shows up as O2 Ireland on phones and devices that display the original network name.

My OnePlus Two phone is affected, so everywhere I had Three with a 3G signal, it now shows as O2 Ireland with a 3G signal. The 4G masts still show the Three name:

Up until last Tuesday, it also listed "Hutchison 3G IReland limited 3G' in addition to its 4G listing (in its 4G areas). I had my phone set to WCDMA/LTE, so 2G networks were not listed above.

Interesting, was wondering what kind of futering was going on there. My dongle wont connect to O2 masts for some reason so its a good thing I grabbed this router or I'd be out of luck when the 4G hits max contention. On that topic, max contention for 4G drops it to 6Mbit. 6. Too damn far away from everything.

Edit: took the laptop to the top of the hill with the dongle and the XPOL-002. Signal only about -5dBm stronger, -63 RSRP, -3 ECIO (figured out where to find it on MDMA), -61dBm. Turns out it didn't increase the speed much more, only about 2Mbit. Not worth tearing the place up over. Going to spin back round to the 4G mast and just wait I guess. 02's 800MHz band for 4G seems to travel much better than the 2100MHz 3G bands ever did with Three. Don't know if I can do anything about the SINR / noise, looking likely that I wont be able to.

ondafly

what settings are you using for the Huawei E5186 LTE-A and Three ? I've had to set the router to auto speed detect, otherwise it detects the traffic as roaming ?

I use 3ireland.ie for the APN and blank for user/pass and I'm using a Treo PrePay sim

ED E

Did they really deploy it with a display name of "IReland" or is that an error in your phones PRL? Really cringeworthy if the former.

Tommy Lagahan

ondafly wrote: »

what settings are you using for the Huawei E5186 LTE-A and Three ? I've had to set the router to auto speed detect, otherwise it detects the traffic as roaming ?

I use 3ireland.ie for the APN and blank for user/pass and I'm using a Treo PrePay sim

Same here, the 3G masts for Three all come up as O2. Is it picking up 3G when you set it to auto? I haven't had any trouble using the O2 masts, speed and bandwidth usage wise.

ondafly

ondafly wrote: »

what settings are you using for the Huawei E5186 LTE-A and Three ? I've had to set the router to auto speed detect, otherwise it detects the traffic as roaming ?

I use 3ireland.ie for the APN and blank for user/pass and I'm using a Treo PrePay sim

You could do a manual search and see if you can latch onto the three network direct. Also I would recommend using 3internet instead of 3ireland.ie as APN. I have my network settings to 4g only and on auto.

ondafly

thanks for the tips guys - I will give it another go today with that different APN too

wozza

is any benefit gained by getting the 5186 router over a basic E5573 dongle ?

I am on ID which piggy back 3 network and get varying speeds from 1 Meg down upto 30 with pings varying from 28 to 70

any help appreciated

Warren

ED E

ID is QoS to ****. Move to 3 themselves before t/sing devices and RSSI.

theluke79

Hi Folks,

I live in the outskirts of Kilkenny, I have LOS with the Three Kilmadum mast, since the mast is now undergoing upgrade, I assume it will get the 4g PLUS.

My B593 (locked on three) is hooked up to 2 MIMO LTE colinear antennas and I was happily getting 25/25 mbit even where I live (R95AFD0). (signal 4 bars), before the mast underwent maintenance.

Will the new 4G+ top my B593 speed , i.e. will it improve ?

With the advent of 4G plus, what do you suggest as an upgrade to the B593?

What can I check before making the purchase?

editorsean

I would suggest holding off until the 4G+ goes live to see what your speed will be like.

4G+ uses carrier aggregation; for Three's network this would be the combination of the 800MHz and 1800MHz bands. This means that when 4G+ goes live in your area, that mast will be operating on both 800MHz and 1800MHz.

While non 4G+ devices will only be able to use one band at a time, the additional band means that there will be more capacity available. 800MHz propagates a lot further than 1800MHz, so most devices that had fringe reception will likely operate switch to the 800MHz band once the mast goes live. This means that the 1800MHz band will have a lot more capacity available for those nearer to the mast.

Any collinear LTE antennas I've come across operate at 1700MHz-2700MHz. If your antennas only cover this spectrum range, your router will be forced to operate on the 1800MHz band, so in theory you should see a speed improvement as many others that were using the mast will then be on the 800MHz band. On the other hand, this would mean that if you choose to upgrade to an 4G+ router, you will need wide band LTE antennas.

Tommy Lagahan

editorsean wrote: »

On the other hand, this would mean that if you choose to upgrade to an 4G+ router, you will need wide band LTE antennas.

Ooh interesting, my massive LPDA antennas should be able to stretch their legs a bit better if Three remember Donegal exists when they roll out 4G+ :pac:

editorsean

I remember your photo of the antenna pair, they were huge! With your B5186, you're all set. :cool:

The only area I heard of in Co. Donegal getting 4G+ was Letterkenny and that was back around April. I miss the page they had on their website announcing the towns/areas that were about to get 4G+.

ED E

@Sean do you know if their LTE-A will aggregate between sites or only co-lo BBUs?

I've a few sites locally that are double stacked but still picking my new handset so can't test.

editorsean

I have not heard about them doing 4G+ band aggregation between sites, so I don't know whether they do.

Tommy Lagahan

editorsean wrote: »

The only area I heard of in Co. Donegal getting 4G+ was Letterkenny and that was back around April. I miss the page they had on their website announcing the towns/areas that were about to get 4G+.

Aghhh! Letterkenny's already getting gigabit wired through siro and eir, now 4G+ too?! Lucky feckers are getting all the internet in the county :P

theluke79

Hi and thank you.

I do see the mast UP again, but there is no way anymore to connect to it!!!

My B593s22 is hooked to a dual mimo LTE colinear antenna (check for example website proscan-antenna.com/col-tube-18-en).

Even if I point the antenna right towards the mast (I am using its coordinates), neither the B593 or the HTC M8 want to connect to it...

I get an extremely variable signal, from 1 o 4.

I even tried to move the antenna and temporarily mount it towards the mast in

3_2526 Knocknadogue
3_5943

But no improvements...

Any help?

WDLandry

Hi Tommy Lagahan and warlikedave,

Thinking of putting an order in for a E5186. 6-7 months on now since your initial purchases of the router I am just wondering if ye are happy with it? Any issues?

4g signal in my area has gotten a significant boost recently so eager to utilise it as the wired speeds are slower here than the 3G I've been using for years.

Had been originally looking at picking up an ASUS 4G-AC55U mainly for the wifi capabilities but it's only cat 4. Could always add another wifi router to the e5186 if the wifi speeds aren't up to my needs. Seems to be the only decent cat 6 router I can see on the market anyway, best to future proof I think.

Any advice is much appreciated.

wozza

WDLandry wrote: »

Hi Tommy Lagahan and warlikedave,

Thinking of putting an order in for a E5186. 6-7 months on now since your initial purchases of the router I am just wondering if ye are happy with it? Any issues?

4g signal in my area has gotten a significant boost recently so eager to utilise it as the wired speeds are slower here than the 3G I've been using for years.

Had been originally looking at picking up an ASUS 4G-AC55U mainly for the wifi capabilities but it's only cat 4. Could always add another wifi router to the e5186 if the wifi speeds aren't up to my needs. Seems to be the only decent cat 6 router I can see on the market anyway, best to future proof I think.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Got an E5186-s22 almost 2 months ago now and cant fault the performance/power of the unit, The unit is in the loft of the bungalow and it gets the signal through the steel walls of a mobile home (our bedroom) which is about 60 metres away from the unit and just done speedtest on testmy server and I got 10.8 MB down & 5.1 MB up not too bad in bed.
3 metres away max, on the Android box I get between 15-33 mbps on the ID network which has some slating but it does what I want 99.9% of the time.

KpsCowley

I just got the E5186-22a in the hope to improve my Three signal. Although it is being out preformed by my samsung Galaxy S5 phone with the same Three sim card when side by side (1mpbs dl from the e5186 vs. 2mbps dl from my phone). It is on default settings and only using internal antenna.
Any tips on where I am going wrong? Are there specific settings to be used with the Three network?

theluke79

Where do you actually see if an area is covered by 4G plus with THREE?
That would be the only reason for me to move from B593 to E5186.
Thanks

editorsean

Unfortunately Three no longer posts the areas served by 4G Plus. Its map does not distinguish between 4G regular and plus coverage either.

The best way to check your location would be to get a lend of a 4G+ capable phone on the Three network and see if it shows '4G+' next to the signal strength indicator either upstairs or around the outside of your home.

The following shows an example from a Samsung Galaxy S7:



If you have two desktops or a NAS connected to your B593, the E5186 would provide the benefit of having gigabit network ports, so file transfers between devices will be substantially quicker if all have gigabit network ports. If you regularly get speed test results around 80Mbps or higher on your B593, it is also quite possible you'll get higher speeds during off-peak periods with the E5186 as the 20MHz band can exceed 100Mbps when the network is quiet, with the bottleneck being the B593s' 100Mbps network ports.

theluke79

Very good insight and very clear.

The B593 is just a modem to me, another better router is DMZ into the B593.

So for now, the only reason would be 4G PLUS, I doubt there is any outside KK center, but maybe I am lucky.

Thanks!

editorsean wrote: »

Unfortunately Three no longer posts the areas served by 4G Plus. Its map does not distinguish between 4G regular and plus coverage either.

The best way to check your location would be to get a lend of a 4G+ capable phone on the Three network and see if it shows '4G+' next to the signal strength indicator either upstairs or around the outside of your home.

The following shows an example from a Samsung Galaxy S7:



If you have two desktops or a NAS connected to your B593, the E5186 would provide the benefit of having gigabit network ports, so file transfers between devices will be substantially quicker if all have gigabit network ports. If you regularly get speed test results around 80Mbps or higher on your B593, it is also quite possible you'll get higher speeds during off-peak periods with the E5186 as the 20MHz band can exceed 100Mbps when the network is quiet, with the bottleneck being the B593s' 100Mbps network ports.

KpsCowley

Here is another option, its an outside modem that you can power through a single cat 6 cable using PoE, it works on band 3 which THREE supports, but the downside is that it supports LTE (4G) only, as far as I can understand (https://www.irishwireless.net/wireless-outdoor/4g-lte/rbsxtlte3-7). Saves the losses incurred with long external antenna leads too. I'm going to give it a shot, will let you know how it goes.

jamescook

I got an E5186-22a thats only getting download speeds of 2Mbps. I am using a Three AYCE sim which in a 3G E5220 was giving me speeds of 4-10 Mbps and when in an iPhone on 4G had speeds of 15-30 Mbps. I have tried the various 3 apns and setting it to 3G/4G only mode but it doesn't make a difference. The router has 3 bars of 4G signal and gives the following info, which I think means there is a good signal:

<rsrq>-6dB</rsrq>
<rsrp>-101dBm</rsrp>
<rssi>-81dBm</rssi>
<sinr>10dB</sinr>
<rscp></rscp>
<ecio></ecio>
<mode>7</mode>
<band>20</band>

Any ideas on whats happening? It came from Sweden if that makes any difference.

KpsCowley

Hey jamescook,

I don't have a good technical understanding, but I can give you my experience.

I have experienced the exact same thing! My wife's iphone 6 can get 3G when the E5186-22a struggles to pick up a signal. Even when I bring it to a 4G area and it picks it up with full signal it only gives 2-4 mbps DL, when the iphone gets 15-20 mbps. So I am going to return it. I didn't change any settings, did you find changing the APN made a difference? I'm using a pay-as-you-go sim.
I don't think buying it from Sweden makes any difference as I got the same model E5186-22a from the UK.

I am still waiting on the SXT LTE to arrive by post.

I have found the same issues that you have. Can anyone explain it?

jamescook

KpsCowley wrote: »

Hey jamescook,

I don't have a good technical understanding, but I can give you my experience.

I have experienced the exact same thing! My wife's iphone 6 can get 3G when the E5186-22a struggles to pick up a signal. Even when I bring it to a 4G area and it picks it up with full signal it only gives 2-4 mbps DL, when the iphone gets 15-20 mbps. So I am going to return it. I didn't change any settings, did you find changing the APN made a difference? I'm using a pay-as-you-go sim.
I don't think buying it from Sweden makes any difference as I got the same model E5186-22a from the UK.

I am still waiting on the SXT LTE to arrive by post.

I have found the same issues that you have. Can anyone explain it?

No nothing I did made any difference.

editorsean

I see ZyXEL has a similar outdoor LTE router, the LTE7410-A214 LTE, which supports both of Three's LTE bands 3 (1800MHz) and 20 (800MHz) as well as 7 (2600MHz). It has a 10dBi gain, similar to the directional wideband LTE log antennas.

On the other hand, it is three times more expensive than the SXT LTE (£285 on Amazon UK) plus the cost of a PoE injector, network cable and an indoor Wi-Fi router, but may be the best option for those who need to run over 10 metres of cable or want to use an existing network cable from a previous fixed wireless access provider.

Just beware that outdoor LTE units require the SIM card to be inserted into the outdoor unit, which could be an issue for anyone that periodically takes the SIM card out of the router.

jamescook

Tried connecting the router via Ethernet to a laptop and using a meteor broadband sim but no change, still hovering around 2 Mbps download.