Huawei 5186

db

I've just setup my new 5186 (more or less PnP, the APN set to nbs.ie) and this is the result of my first speed test.

Is it worth my while trying to improve this by moving it to a different location or getting an external antenna?

db

So I thought after I started using the 5186 this afternoon that at last I would have decent broadband. Unfortunately, by 7pm my speed had dropped from >40Mb to <3Mb, the same as I get on the landline. It's now gone back above 50GB so it looks like this is going to be a regular occurrence. When the speeds were at the worst I was at least getting ~10Mb on 3G so this may be the way to go for now.

Is there anything I can do to improve 4G speeds in the evening?

editorsean

Unfortunately I don't think much can be done with the evening time 4G speed with Three.

When I last ran tests, Three is clearly prioritising/throttling certain types of traffic. For example, you'll probably find that YouTube has no problem playing 1080p in the evenings. Similarly Google server traffic is prioritised. The following is a network graph I captured from Task Manager right after running a speed test, followed by downloading a video from Google photos:



The video download reached over 4MB/s (>32Mbps), yet Ookla's Speed test consistently showed 3-4Mbps no matter what server I picked.

Up until sometime last year, Three was prioritising certain ports, including port 8080 that Ookla's speed test uses. For example, if you run a test with Ookla to a London server and repeated with TestMy (which uses port 80) to its London server, Ookla's result was usually 10 to 20 times higher. On the other hand, it was easy to exploit - Just make a VPN connection over port 8080 (with a suitable VPN service) and that's exactly what I used to do until Three stopped prioritising certain port #s.

If you are just looking to speed up downloads, try a multi-threaded download manager. The Firefox plug-in DownThemAll! can make multi-threaded connections, e.g. try downloading a Linux ISO in Firefox and then try with DownloadThemAll! set to 10+ threads.

db

Thanks editorsean. Netflix was running very well yesterday evening so the Ookla speedtest may not be the best measure. I will run some tests downloading a large ISO and see what I get.

ED E

editorsean wrote: »

When I last ran tests, Three is clearly prioritising/throttling certain types of traffic.

You make it sound like an active shaping scheme. It may well not be, three may just have limited peering out to some nets and plentiful to others.