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

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.

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?

I managed to get 4G speeds today after I reset the router. Unfortunately when I moved it to a different room in the house and turned it back on, it went back to less than 2 Mbps down again. I had reset it before and have tried resetting it again to no avail.

theluke79

editorsean wrote: »

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.

Gr8 piece of equipment! If only there was a real 4G unlimited plan (or at least with 400+ gb month)