My 3G/4G testing...

I've been playing with some mobile networks on my Mikrotik LTE router as currently that's the only way I can get internet access. I have a Three "200MB free per month" SIM card which I normally keep in my iPhone. This charges 1p/MB after the free 200MB is used up, but the bundles are quite expensive. The other one is a Giffgaff SIM which charges a whopping 10p/MB, but has cheap bundles.

With both of them in the Mikrotik router, the 4G performance is terrible. I can get quite high instantaneous speeds (20Mbps+), which is good for bulk upload/download of stuff like video or software updates but is useless for VoIP (it results in long periods of silence) and a lot of connections like IRC will timeout regularly.

I have mostly been using the giffgaff SIM in 3G mode, as although the speed is much slower (<5Mbps), there is much less jitter and packet loss, so it works more or less OK for VoIP, and IRC and internet radio don't fail as often). It does still have issues though as sometimes IRC will timeout and webpages will only half load.

Here is the CQM graph for the giffgaff SIM showing the difference between 3G and 4G: http://stevecoates.net/stuff/networking/giffgaff-3g-...

Here is the CQM graph for the Three SIM on 4G: http://stevecoates.net/stuff/networking/three-4g-cqm...

I'm interested to know why these are so bad. Is it more likely to be a poor signal? Or is it more likely to be network congestion? I am in a suburb and we are quite well served by mobile networks.

I'm hoping to get an EE and a Vodafone SIM in the near future to try those out and see if they are any better.

What LTE category is your MicroTik device? Modern phones are Cat 16 or higher, but many LTE modems are legacy Cat 4.

Cat 4 makes one connection at a time, on one freq band. Cat 6 can aggregate two together, and higher categories can use more at once. My local EE mast has 4 transmissions and bonding all together on my 4 year old OnePlus Nord lets me reach speeds of 200 Mbps.

Use something like cellmapper.net to locate your nearest mast on any of the 4 physical UK networks, EE, Vodafone, Three or O2 and identify what freqency bands are transmitted, and how many.

Edited by jchamier (Fri 12-May-23 10:21:01)

Its a Mikrotik R11e-LTE which is Cat 4.

https://mikrotik.com/product/r11e_lte

TBH, the speed isn't too much of a concern. I'm happy with slower speeds, I just prefer reliability, so things don't conk out half way through. The problem with having mobile data at ridiculously high speeds is that it is expensive, and you can easily run up a huge bill in moments!

I've just had a look at Cellmapper and have forced the Mikrotik onto some other cells by manually selecting a band.

In reply to a post by steve30:

TBH, the speed isn't too much of a concern. I'm happy with slower speeds, I just prefer reliability, so things don't conk out half way through. The problem with having mobile data at ridiculously high speeds is that it is expensive, and you can easily run up a huge bill in moments!

Unless you're on Smarty with an unlimited SIM or similar.

Don't confuse multi-band with high speeds. You need multi-band aggregation for capacity. Think M25's 4 lanes at peak time, everyone doing 50 MPH but tens of thousands of cars per hour instead of hundreds. In networking "capacity" is where you see lower latency and/or jitter for VoIP calls.

These embedded systems are unfortunately quite old in design. Cat 4 is about 10 years old, in computer and telecommunications terms that is an eternity.

I've just had a look at Cellmapper and have forced the Mikrotik onto some other cells by manually selecting a band.

You can swap between the bands for your network, but you will always be hunting. I think it was Microtik that had a newer Cat 6 module, which would be a big improvement, worth talking to them see what the options are.

A cheap entry level Android phone with 4G (LTE) is Cat 18 for example...
https://www.oneplus.com/uk/nord-specs

Unless you need water proof external, it may be worth investigating an internal (in window) receiver of a higher Category (or even 5G).

Unless basic connectivity is all you need.

Edited by jchamier (Fri 12-May-23 19:17:40)

Try vodafone 4G (lebara) but it cost £25 per month for unlimited data with no contract (but lucky me they give me free 1 month to try it out)

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/16839307541...

Thanks for the information. My knowledge of cellular technology is a bit non-existent .

Mikrotik do indeed have a Cat 6 card which I could upgrade to, but its not worth spending the money on at the moment. They also do some other LTE and 5G stuff which seems to have a higher rating but you have to buy the entire router, rather than just the card. Again, something to bare in mind for the future, but its more than I can afford at the moment.

In reply to a post by steve30:

Thanks for the information. My knowledge of cellular technology is a bit non-existent .

At one point I had about 8 different "MiFi" boxes, from 3G, through Cat 3/ Cat4, Cat 6, upwards! The latest are now outside my price range sadly. (Netgear M1/M1000 type thing on Amazon).

Mikrotik do indeed have a Cat 6 card which I could upgrade to, but its not worth spending the money on at the moment. They also do some other LTE and 5G stuff which seems to have a higher rating but you have to buy the entire router, rather than just the card. Again, something to bare in mind for the future, but its more than I can afford at the moment.

Good luck on what you decide.

In reply to a post by steve30:

Thanks for the information. My knowledge of cellular technology is a bit non-existent .

Mikrotik do indeed have a Cat 6 card which I could upgrade to, but its not worth spending the money on at the moment. They also do some other LTE and 5G stuff which seems to have a higher rating but you have to buy the entire router, rather than just the card. Again, something to bare in mind for the future, but its more than I can afford at the moment.

Fair point but uswitch have 3 months of £9.98 to have Lebara unlimited data with 60% off to try it out. Like you say it your decision and your personal choice. Good luck whatever u do next.

And what antenna(s) do you have ?

Due to Virgin's unreliability as of late I've recently invested in setting up a 5G backup solution. Definitely pricey, but if it's your only way of getting a broadband connection, I highly recommend it if you're in an area with good signal.
Direct from 3 with unlimited usage, it's £20 pm on a 24m contract (more on a shorter contract).

But what I did was purchase the router (Zyxel NR5103E) off eBay for ~£150. You get a good futureproofed LTE Cat 22 Modem + WiFi 6 router, with the ability for it to do IP passthrough to your existing router if you wish. Make sure you get a 3 branded model, not a more locked down EE branded model. The internal antenna on this are great, and I'd only invest in an external one if you're unable to locate the router somewhere inside that can get decent signal. Placement is extremely important when it comes to 3G/4G/5G, and it makes a massive difference on speed and reliability.
Placed on an upstairs window sill facing the direction of the mast I've seen speeds in excess of 700down/70up (albeit during peak that's more like 350down/50up)
SMARTY sims are cheap enough with good data bundles, but you will be subject to CGNAT. If you use a 3 sim directly, using the 3internet APN you get issued a publicly addressable IP address.

Other networks work on the router, after you manually alter the APN details.
I purchased a 3 sim from a business reseller for 1TB of data pm til late 2025 and it worked out at under £3pm, but I had to pay the full sum upfront.

Has already come in very handy during a few outages with Virgin, as well as a new upload capacity issue I'm occasionally seeing.
Ping cannot compare to fixed line broadband (see BQMs in signature), but is more than adequate and reliable, and I didn't have any problems on teams or with my VPN dropping for work during peak times. Genuinely considering not renewing my Virgin contract when it comes to an end in August and just relying on the 5G, whilst I wait for Community Fibre to roll out over my area over the next year or two.

I tested O2 (awful) and Vodafone (adequate) and speeds were nowhere near to 3 where I'm located, unfortunately didn't have an EE sim to test, but given they share the 3 mast I connect to, I'd expect similar or better based on past experience.
3G networks are beginning to be retired across the country so I'd keep that in mind if 3G is what is currently giving you an adequate experience, soon(ish) 4G/5G will be your only options!

Edited by Jonny4911 (Tue 16-May-23 13:05:53)

May I ask how to set up Broadband Quality Monitor on NR5103E as it all full RED on it?

Which SIM, if SMARTY you can’t as its a CGNAT network.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Which SIM, if SMARTY you can’t as its a CGNAT network.

Very few 3G would not be CGNAT. You'd need to be on something exceptional. It is possible but rare.

Agreed. Only Three contract was public IP. However EE does IPv6 if hardware compatible fully routed. Only managed to see EE IPv6 on an iPhone or iPad so far.

In reply to a post by andynormancx:

And what antenna(s) do you have ?

Just the built in ones on the Mikrotik router.

Jonny4911: Sounds like you have a nice setup there with the 5G. For the price, its probably not worth paying for both Virgin AND 5G.

adslmax: You won't be able to if its CGNAT. Personally I use an Andrews & Arnold L2TP tunnel which gives me a public IPv4 address and a /48 of IPv6, and a quality monitor thrown in for free. I can use that on any connection and get the same IP addresses. Works nicely, but you do have to pay for it. They do do a cheaper option now for £3/month which is bandwidth limited, so useful for VoIP, IoT stuff, etc. It may also be doable with a VPN of some kind.

In reply to a post by steve30:

They do do a cheaper option now for £3/month

Ooh, nice! Looks like only £2.40 per month, limited to 3Mbps and 1TB/month. But perfect for SSH'ing into your home machines.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

May I ask how to set up Broadband Quality Monitor on NR5103E as it all full RED on it?

The BQM only works on if you're on 3 (not a MVNO like SMARTY) using the 3internet APN, as you won't be subject to CGNAT. Otherwise you'll have to explore another solution like other's have mentioned.
I'm not sure if the NR5103E will respond to ping requests directly if you're using it as your router, you may have to hunt through the settings to get it to do so. As I've setup IP passthrough on the NR5103E it's my UniFi UDM-Pro that's responding to the BQM.

Which router do you have, you linked to the modem, not the router.

Now that my GiffGaff 'goodybag' has run out I decided to get a 1pMobile SIM. 1pMobile are an MVNO on the EE network. This month I have paid £12.50 for 25GB.

Here is the quality graph for the EE SIM on both 3G and 4G. The 3G performance was better than O2, with far less latency and almost double the data rate. I gather EE are discontinuing 3G next month so I wouldn't be surprised if hardly anyone was using it. The 4G performance, compared to the O2 and Three graphs in the first post, is excellent. Not much latency, not too many latency 'spikes', virtually no packet loss, and reasonable speeds. I am able to attain 15-25Mbps down and 5-10Mbps up which is more than fast enough for my need.

http://stevecoates.net/stuff/networking/ee-3g4g-cqm.png

Band 3 gave the best performance so I've locked the router to that.

Edited by steve30 (Thu 25-May-23 22:09:39)

In reply to a post by steve30:

The 3G performance was better than O2, with far less latency and almost double the data rate. I gather EE are discontinuing 3G next month so I wouldn't be surprised if hardly anyone was using it.

Only in Warrington, if you live there. Rest of country likely won't lose 3G until 2024, however its not worth using as the 3G has been reduced to the minimum.

The 4G performance, compared to the O2 and Three graphs in the first post, is excellent. Not much latency, not too many latency 'spikes', virtually no packet loss, and reasonable speeds. I am able to attain 15-25Mbps down and 5-10Mbps up which is more than fast enough for my need.

Pretty common, you're likely found that EE deploys 20 MHz on 1800 (Band 3) and in many areas has deployed 20+20 or 20+15 across two carriers. Then EE is also often deploying 2100 (Band 1) and 2600 (Band 7) for capacity.

Of course if you have a Cat 4 modem then you can only use one carrier at a time, on any of the bands. So it is most likely you will be comparing O2's 10 MHz on Band 20, and Three's 15 MHz on Band 3 with EE's 20 MHz on Band 3.

Band 3 gave the best performance so I've locked the router to that.

Locking confuses me, as this means the mast can't ask your UE to move to a different band if the statistics make it worthwhile, e.g. from Band 3 to Band 1 to Band 7 etc.

Edited by jchamier (Fri 26-May-23 10:15:05)

An update after several months of EE 4G...

Sometimes it worked fine for a day, then I got periods of several hours with lots of packet loss. I've also found that the antenna position can make a huge difference. It was in the corner of the window sill, but placing it in the middle of the window and mounting it horizontally, rather than vertically seems to be better.

I've now got it on band 3 as that was doing better than band 1. Last time I posted I locked it to band 1 as it kept alternating between the two bands, but when it did, the band 3 performance was very poor.

Anyway, it seems to be working nicely, for now.