Mobile Broadband Questions

Hey guys, I have some questions regarding mobile broadband.

I have signed up for 2degrees mobile broadband, and they have supplied a router, the huawei B535. I have recently managed to get my hands on a Huawei B818-263, because I found this seems to be the only consumer grade router that ive managed to find that supports bridged mode.

I have installed the 818 but I seem to be getting much lower speeds. I am connecting to the tower which is about 4 kilometers away. Is this down to the router? Is the B818 better over the B535 as I heard it can support multiple bands rather then the 535.

The other question I have is regarding antennas. When I first got the connection and was sent the 535, I was getting 90mbps down. Super solid and great speeds but over time that has slowly deteriorated. Would I benefit from an antenna, The router says I have about 85 to 90% signal strength. Would I benefit from say a directional YAGI or is there no point?

Im just trying to get the most out of the connection. This seems to be permanent for us now, so I would like to benefit and get the best speeds possible.

In reply to a post by deanfourie:

I have signed up for 2degrees mobile broadband

Is that a New Zealand provider? We're a UK forum. Someone may have an answer generally but bear in mind.

seb

Yea it is, best I can do unfortunately.

But, the principals remain the same

If you can identify the LTE Category of the two devices that would give you a clue. Unfortunately Huawei routers are mostly sold through the service provider, and not retail, so getting hold of reliable technical specifications is hard. They are often different per region.

A recent thread in this forum had someone wondering why their Huawei modem was significantly slower than an Honor phone handset. The secret is the LTE Category. One was Cat 6/7 and the other was around Cat 12.

This table gives some idea, but like most it quotes "max datarate" which is not a useful measurement on a cellular connection. What you need is a higher 3GPP Release, as that brings additional benefits. (e.g. higher order MIMO, different transmission modes such as 256QAM, as well as increasing number of carrier aggregation options).

If you can find out what your local cell site is transmitting, you will want a receiver that handles the same.

External antenna only help if signal is poor, look as RSSI and similar numbers. This chart might help determine if you have a good or poor signal.

(edit - fix links)

Edited by jchamier (Sun 20-Mar-22 10:47:34)

Thanks for the reply.

According to this,
https://consumer.huawei.com/ie/routers/4g-router-3-p...

Its a CAT19 router, speeds of up to 1.6GBps, not sure if I believe this stuff though.

Love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks

In reply to a post by deanfourie:

Love to hear your thoughts.

CAT 19 sounds good, you now need to find out what the configuration of the mast you are receiving signals from.

Then the only thing left is contention, ie, how many other users are on the same mast. This is where radio is hard as users move around