Hey mate, been looking into this some more as I'm having problems with a small selection of sites and services. As you noted, a VPN completely fixes it for me (thanks for the link btw, wasn't aware of Cloudflare's).

Would you mind helping me out a small bit? If you're using SMARTY 4G with a desktop PC, could you try this website (without a VPN, keep the settings at the top to their defaults) and see if it constantly changes IP every second for you, and if you get frequent timeout errors? You only have to keep the page open for a minute or so, I'd really appreciate it mate.

Edited by thebigdolphin1 (Thu 12-Aug-21 20:15:42)

I'm using a Three PAYG SIM in my iPad (using the three.co.uk APN), so I tried your site.

In the last 3 minutes I've seen 4 different IP addresses, and it is now changing about every 15 to 20 seconds. The IPs are obviously reused as they are sometimes repeating. Either Three has a network fault, or they have a serious lack of IPv4 addresses compared to EE or Vodafone.

I'm also trying it on my phone with EE contract and my work phone on Vodafone.

On Three in 8 minutes I have about 28 changes of IP.

On EE in 4 minutes still showing the same IP.
On Vodafone in 4 minutes still showing the same IP.

Now changed the iPad to use the 3internet APN (I understand SMARTY doesn't let you change the APN).

After 5 minutes showing the same IP.

Conclusion - the APN intended for phones "three.co.uk" which is also used by all SMARTY customers has a fast change of IP address, unlike the competitor networks EE and Vodafone.

Edited by jchamier (Thu 12-Aug-21 20:51:33)

Thanks so much for trying that out! It's very interesting to see how it differs between provider, Three seem to be very aggressive on reallocating IPs — even more so in my experience, mine seems to change every 2 seconds (to be fair I'm using SMARTY, ran by Three but much cheaper).

I assume you didn't get any timeout errors while testing? They'd show up as lines of red text.

Not really relevant, but I'm not sure whether they assign IPs to certain regions or re-use the same ones over the whole country. From my tests the 92.40.190.0/24 IP range seems to be used for SMARTY, and 92.40.191.0/24 for Three.

Edited by thebigdolphin1 (Thu 12-Aug-21 20:58:57)

In reply to a post by thebigdolphin1:

I assume you didn't get any timeout errors while testing? They'd show up as lines of red text.

No I didn't see any timeouts when testing, but caused one turning WiFi on and Off on the iPad.

I found the "3internet" APN gave 4 Mbps speeds, whereas the "three.co.uk" APN gives 18 Mbps speeds. The reason I use a PAYG is because this is rubbish where I live, as my work Vodafone gets between 28 and 45 Mbps, and my EE on the same mast as Three, gives 150 Mbps.

Huh that's peculiar that the APN would affect speeds... could that be down to just coincidence/network instability, or did you actually see a noticeable difference between the two? Looks like I'll just stick with a fluctuating IP if that's the case 😂

As for the EE vs Three speeds, really odd... I wonder if that's down to Three being heavily overloaded or just EE offering LTE-A with more frequencies? I've noticed my speeds seem to drop as low as 15Mb/s from 8PM to 1AM, but go back to 50Mb/s outside those hours (and up to 80Mb/s at 3AM).

In reply to a post by thebigdolphin1:

Huh that's peculiar that the APN would affect speeds... could that be down to just coincidence/network instability, or did you actually see a noticeable difference between the two? Looks like I'll just stick with a fluctuating IP if that's the case 😂

I was surprised at the speeds, perhaps my PAYG SIM is throttled for the 3internet APN which was intended for mobile broadband. (If that IS the case I should let Ofcom know!).

As for the EE vs Three speeds, really odd... I wonder if that's down to Three being heavily overloaded or just EE offering LTE-A with more frequencies? I've noticed my speeds seem to drop as low as 15Mb/s from 8PM to 1AM, but go back to 50Mb/s outside those hours (and up to 80Mb/s at 3AM).

Three has done no upgrades here. They only have a single 15 MHz channel on Band 3 (1800 MHz) but probably a lot of users. The fastest I've seen once was 70 Mbps.

Whereas EE has upgraded the LTE in this neighbourhood in the last 8 years from one 10 Mhz wide channel on Band 3, upto last Christmas when it was 2 channels each 20 MHz wide on Band 3, and then last month added two more channels (20 & 15 MHz wide) on Band 7 (2600 MHz). So my phone is able to carrier aggregate the 4 channels for high speed. This is normally a setup you see for crowded shopping centres.

Three however have spent a few million adding their random 5G monopoles into two parts of town, one covers the bypass quite well, and the other Morrisons supermarket. Not many actual customers, but speeds in range of those are good on 4G and 5G.

Nobody understands what Three are up to.

Yeah I've only got a 15 MHz Band 3 channel too, though the individual cell area only covers a small set of around 100 houses (according to Cellmapper).

EE seem to be miles ahead on upgrades, one.network shows they're doing some upgrades to a nearby mast — possibly 5G, given that Openreach installed some fibre cables to it the other week. Just a shame they're a lot more expensive and don't offer a truly unlimited plan, otherwise I'd switch (I'm only 12 days into using SMARTY and I'm already at 520GB).

Still, considering I've got around 10 free months of SMARTY from referrals, I can't really complain at the low price of nothing 😂

In reply to a post by thebigdolphin1:

Just a shame they're a lot more expensive and don't offer a truly unlimited plan, otherwise I'd switch (I'm only 12 days into using SMARTY and I'm already at 520GB).

Ha, that’s more than my monthly usage on my fixed line broadband

Still, considering I've got around 10 free months of SMARTY from referrals, I can't really complain at the low price of nothing 😂

Yes, that is very impressive!

Yeah well it pretty much is my equivalent to fixed line broadband now, that's to be expected haha! Much faster too, we were only getting 14Mb/s through Openreach's "fibre", so switching to 4G was a no-brainer. I'd expect next months usage to be much lower though, I've been downloading a bunch of games and apps that I was holding off from doing when stuck with a slow connection.

In reply to a post by thebigdolphin1:

Would you mind helping me out a small bit? If you're using SMARTY 4G with a desktop PC, could you try this website (without a VPN, keep the settings at the top to their defaults) and see if it constantly changes IP every second for you, and if you get frequent timeout errors? You only have to keep the page open for a minute or so, I'd really appreciate it mate.

Sorry for the delay. Ran it for a minute or so and got at least 5 different IPs. No timeouts or anything though.

I'm envious of your referral collection skills.

Edited by deleted (Mon 16-Aug-21 17:30:21)