4G External Antenna is Slower - Help?

Hi All. This is my first time posting, but any ideas would be appreciated.

Due to a terribly slow BT Line, around 4 months ago I opted for 3's 4G tariff.

I upgraded the initial B311 router to the more powerful B525.

My house is a bit of a flat spot with 4G and I can rarely seem to catch it, despite being in the zone based on their website.

My router has always been sitting on my top floor window seal, on the correct side of the house.

I have always opted changing the router settings to '3G Only', as this gave me a better and stronger signal. For example;

4G - Download speeds would be 6mbps and I would have 1/5 bars of 4G signal.

3G - Download speeds would reach 20mbps and I would have 5/5 bars of 4G Signal.

This lead me to enquiring about the Poynting XPOL-0001 External Antenna.

Before spending the cash, I thought I'd cheekily put the router in the attic as I have a power source up there. Instantly, I was hitting 3/5 bars of 4G. I then changed the router settings to 4G only.

I conducted a speed test and to my surprise, it peaked at 35mbps, but would average around 25mbps.

I've since installed the Poynting XPOL-0001 in the attic with the router, among other places in the house. The attic is definitely giving the best results but they have decreased the download speed significantly, but increased the upload speed.

I now have FULL 5/5 bars on 4G, which is why I'm confused as to why my results are worse.

The router is around 4 metres away from the antenna, as it only has a 5m cable provided.

The router settings are now on 4G only and the antenna settings are on external.

The only improvement I can see thus far is a lesser ping, less jitter and a much higher upload speed.

I've since attached the rabbit ear antennas and reverted the antenna settings to 'Auto' and I'm back up to 35mbps on 3/5 bars of 4G

Any expertise would be great, thanks again! (I'm sure I've missed out something)

Edited by JCWTom (Thu 10-Oct-19 16:47:47)

In the B525 webpage click on ? , it should should you the frequency it has latched onto. If my B525 on Three is left to its own devices on 4G only then it latches onto 800mhz Band 20 which only had 5mhz of bandwidth on Three, so I use LTEInspecteur to instruct it to use 1800mhz Band 3 for UL and DL (15mhz of bandwidth eg 3 times the speed) and 800 Band 20 for DL only. This give me the best speeds and on heavy downloads 4G+ Carrier Aggregation kicks in and both frequencies are used for downloading.

The external Ariel needs to go outside on the side of the house nearest the mast you are using,

This all assumes the mast is set up as my local Three mast, but as you have got better speeds in the past I assume your is the same a mix of Band 3 and Band 20. Band 3 is fast but does not travel far, Band 20 is slower but works at longer distances.

Thanks for your reply.

I'm struggling to find the ? on the webpage, to show me the frequency it's latched on to...

Browser 192.168.8.1 and log in

You will get the router home page and to the right of Home there will be ? and then Statistics. Click on the ?

My B525 doesn't have a ? on the home page, and on the singal strength indicator just shows 4G or 4G+. Is yours locked to a network as it would be great to see this at a glance? I've had to lookup the transmitter on cellmapper to figure out which band it's likely to be, or use a tool from the internet.

Install LTEInspecteur on your PC, this will tell you the same info and allow more control as long as the mast allows it.

In reply to a post by kommando:

Install LTEInspecteur on your PC, this will tell you the same info and allow more control as long as the mast allows it.

That was the tool from the internet i was referring to

Thanks for this.

I've loaded cellmapper and have located the closest tower to me (approximately 400 metres) and I can see that numerous cell's run at 15mhz, whilst others run at 5mhz.

Now I've trawled through the settings on 192.168.8.1 and can't find anything that would show me how to potentially check what I'm currently running on and how to change it....

can you post some screenshots - of the homepage after logging in and the settings page, you may black out the IP details. Someone who has similar set up can guide you better then.

I use this script on linux.

#!/bin/sh
RESPONSE=`curl -s -X GET http://192.168.8.1/api/webserver/SesTokInfo`
COOKIE=`echo "$RESPONSE"| grep SessionID=| cut -b 10-147`
TOKEN=`echo "$RESPONSE"| grep TokInfo| cut -b 10-41`
curl -s http://192.168.8.1/api/device/signal -H "Cookie: $COOKIE" -H "__RequestVerificationToken: $TOKEN" -o /tmp/Signal.txt
cat /tmp/Signal.txt

It returns various signal strengths and also the PCI of the cell you are connected to. Then lookup this cell on cellmapper.

The script could be ported to windows, but I am away for the weekend.

In reply to a post by TimJ:

I use this script on linux.

#!/bin/sh
RESPONSE=`curl -s -X GET http://192.168.8.1/api/webserver/SesTokInfo`
COOKIE=`echo "$RESPONSE"| grep SessionID=| cut -b 10-147`
TOKEN=`echo "$RESPONSE"| grep TokInfo| cut -b 10-41`
curl -s http://192.168.8.1/api/device/signal -H "Cookie: $COOKIE" -H "__RequestVerificationToken: $TOKEN" -o /tmp/Signal.txt
cat /tmp/Signal.txt

It returns various signal strengths and also the PCI of the cell you are connected to. Then lookup this cell on cellmapper.

The script could be ported to windows, but I am away for the weekend.

Isn't authentication missing from this script?

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by TimJ:

I use this script on linux.

#!/bin/sh
RESPONSE=`curl -s -X GET http://192.168.8.1/api/webserver/SesTokInfo`
COOKIE=`echo "$RESPONSE"| grep SessionID=| cut -b 10-147`
TOKEN=`echo "$RESPONSE"| grep TokInfo| cut -b 10-41`
curl -s http://192.168.8.1/api/device/signal -H "Cookie: $COOKIE" -H "__RequestVerificationToken: $TOKEN" -o /tmp/Signal.txt
cat /tmp/Signal.txt

It returns various signal strengths and also the PCI of the cell you are connected to. Then lookup this cell on cellmapper.

The script could be ported to windows, but I am away for the weekend.

Isn't authentication missing from this script?

I should clarify

I can see you call the SesTokInfo API and its return is set as the value for the variable RESPONSE which is then parsed using grep to get Session Id and Token Info and they are placed into 2 seperate variables called COOKIE and TOKEN which are both used as parameters when calling the Signal API but at no point have you passed in a User and Password which is done via the Login API.

I found the xpol1 to be average at best but the xpol2 when directed correctly gives me a nice 120mb down