Three UK - 4G Home Broadband - any users here?
Discussion
I'd upgrade the box.
Good timing to get my brain into gear too, as my contract will be up soon. I have had zero issues with it and at about 30mb down, never noticed an issue. My Galaxy Note Lite tw@ts around with the connection rather than the actual 3 box feeding my house!
I've just had a look at ADSL again and it's about the same as it was before, and would be a sideways move at best, and a pain in the bum in the other as all my wiring heads into the loft now...
Has anyone got a weapons grade replacement 4g box suggestion? (No murmors of my area becoming 5g yet so I'll ignore that for now). Wondering if a new router box and an external antennae would be a better 'upgrade' for me to do and try to chip the renewal on what I have down instead.
What should I budget for a new sim card box and an OK external antennae (preferably with SMB connections or similar as I'd have to run it a few feet to the soffits etc)
Good timing to get my brain into gear too, as my contract will be up soon. I have had zero issues with it and at about 30mb down, never noticed an issue. My Galaxy Note Lite tw@ts around with the connection rather than the actual 3 box feeding my house!
I've just had a look at ADSL again and it's about the same as it was before, and would be a sideways move at best, and a pain in the bum in the other as all my wiring heads into the loft now...
Has anyone got a weapons grade replacement 4g box suggestion? (No murmors of my area becoming 5g yet so I'll ignore that for now). Wondering if a new router box and an external antennae would be a better 'upgrade' for me to do and try to chip the renewal on what I have down instead.
What should I budget for a new sim card box and an OK external antennae (preferably with SMB connections or similar as I'd have to run it a few feet to the soffits etc)
I'm taking on a new service soon with EE, so I'll have LTE from Vodafone and EE each with a semi-directional router/antenna mounted at roof level which I expect to get 60-70Mbps and 40Mbps respectively, a fixed wireless provision (50Mbps) and possibly Starlink in the near future (100-200Mbps) if my pre-order gets fulfilled.
I've had some reliability issues with only two services, with occasions when both are dropping packets, so hoping that further diversification will help plug the gap until fibre becomes feasible.
I've been managing with a Unifi USG utilising both WAN links but need to identify a multi-WAN router with 4 or more WAN ports and the ability to both prioritise certain paths with policy based routing, and automatically failover. Any sort of SD-WAN path aggregation would be great but these tend to be enterprise offerings which aren't cheap or straightforward to use.
Just wondering if anyone is using anything similar. Draytek's 3910 seems to be the ticket for what I'm trying to do.
I've had some reliability issues with only two services, with occasions when both are dropping packets, so hoping that further diversification will help plug the gap until fibre becomes feasible.
I've been managing with a Unifi USG utilising both WAN links but need to identify a multi-WAN router with 4 or more WAN ports and the ability to both prioritise certain paths with policy based routing, and automatically failover. Any sort of SD-WAN path aggregation would be great but these tend to be enterprise offerings which aren't cheap or straightforward to use.
Just wondering if anyone is using anything similar. Draytek's 3910 seems to be the ticket for what I'm trying to do.
Replaced my 5 year old Netgear AirCard 785 and NETGEAR DC113A-100EUS AirCard 4G LTE Signal Boosting and Charging Cradle with Ethernet with a B818 using an EE sim, and signal strength has gone from 3 bar to full bars, and the speed from 65Mbps up to 100Mbps so a worthwhile upgrade.
And when linked to my Three SIM running in a Netgear LB2120 with external antenna I get speeds of;
Question now is, do I get a second B818 ?
And when linked to my Three SIM running in a Netgear LB2120 with external antenna I get speeds of;
Question now is, do I get a second B818 ?
DuckSauce said:
The B818 is pretty good. Only frustration I have, is it keeps dropping carrier aggregation, which drastically reduces my speed. I have to go into the settings and change the frequency, save it, leave it a few minutes and then change it back
Is this similar to your carrier aggregation issue ? I noticed my speeds have dropped through the floor this morning;
Edited to add, I don't think you can force "4G+" only (you can 4G, 3G etc) and am not convinced that would be desirable anyway.
It may just be atmospherics or something causing signal degradation?
I found EE technical support really good at looking into issues. Am on a business account so not sure if that was why. But they really did a thorough job of helping me trace issues. It may be worth calling them and seeing what they can see from their end. Explain you were getting 4G+ previously but now only 4G.
It may also be worth restarting the router to see if it then picks up a better signal....and/or maybe seeing what happens if you force it to 4G only (rather than 'Auto').
It may just be atmospherics or something causing signal degradation?
I found EE technical support really good at looking into issues. Am on a business account so not sure if that was why. But they really did a thorough job of helping me trace issues. It may be worth calling them and seeing what they can see from their end. Explain you were getting 4G+ previously but now only 4G.
It may also be worth restarting the router to see if it then picks up a better signal....and/or maybe seeing what happens if you force it to 4G only (rather than 'Auto').
Murph7355 said:
Edited to add, I don't think you can force "4G+" only (you can 4G, 3G etc) and am not convinced that would be desirable anyway.
It may just be atmospherics or something causing signal degradation?
I found EE technical support really good at looking into issues. Am on a business account so not sure if that was why. But they really did a thorough job of helping me trace issues. It may be worth calling them and seeing what they can see from their end. Explain you were getting 4G+ previously but now only 4G.
It may also be worth restarting the router to see if it then picks up a better signal....and/or maybe seeing what happens if you force it to 4G only (rather than 'Auto').
Thanks, signed up to the EE Network Status Checker, that there was a known issue in my area, so looks like the engineers will be onto the issue shortly.It may just be atmospherics or something causing signal degradation?
I found EE technical support really good at looking into issues. Am on a business account so not sure if that was why. But they really did a thorough job of helping me trace issues. It may be worth calling them and seeing what they can see from their end. Explain you were getting 4G+ previously but now only 4G.
It may also be worth restarting the router to see if it then picks up a better signal....and/or maybe seeing what happens if you force it to 4G only (rather than 'Auto').
Murph7355 said:
rfsteel said:
Is this similar to your carrier aggregation issue ? I noticed my speeds have dropped through the floor this morning;
You appear to have flicked into a standard 4G signal whereas before you were getting 4G+.theboss said:
Not sure if I'm missing some underlying explanation but those screenshots show two connections to different cells on different networks.
Looks like I've been kicked off the closer mast that I was connected to earlier in the week, and now connected to 2 masts further away.I'm using the same masts, and presume different kit exists for each network, hence the EE issue also affecting Three.
That's exactly the same issue, drops from 4g+ to just 4g. If you have an Android phone, you can download HuaCTRL
It's an app that's been posted about before (I believe in this thread) it's brilliant and so easy to use. You can change which bands you use.
For me, if I set it to only use 1800 and 800 it will normally force it into 4g+ (I believe that's carrier aggregation)
You will notice the speed difference
It's an app that's been posted about before (I believe in this thread) it's brilliant and so easy to use. You can change which bands you use.
For me, if I set it to only use 1800 and 800 it will normally force it into 4g+ (I believe that's carrier aggregation)
You will notice the speed difference
I've just downloaded LTE H-Monitor, so how do i go about configuring my 818 router with the mast that it's currently working with?
The only thing i've done so far is changed the Network Mode into 4G, from Auto
What can i do with the LTW Band section to allow for a "better" connection/faster speeds? If anything.
Thanks
The only thing i've done so far is changed the Network Mode into 4G, from Auto
What can i do with the LTW Band section to allow for a "better" connection/faster speeds? If anything.
Thanks
Edited by bunchofkeys on Sunday 18th April 15:21
The app mentioned above seems to let you only use selected bands. So if you can guarantee which gives you "4G+" then you could isolate to those.
BUT...
The more you tie this down, the less resilient it will be.
If the mast giving you a good signal on the bands you've chosen goes down, you may end up with nothing at all rather than a std 4G signal....
For my use, restricting to 4G via the router interface was fine. I have an ADSL fail over link that is faster than the 3G speeds I would get. So there was no point letting the B818 fall back to 3G as I have better available.
The same isn't true between 4G and 4G+...the 4G speed is still better than my ADSL. So I leave the B818 to sort that bit out.
BUT...
The more you tie this down, the less resilient it will be.
If the mast giving you a good signal on the bands you've chosen goes down, you may end up with nothing at all rather than a std 4G signal....
For my use, restricting to 4G via the router interface was fine. I have an ADSL fail over link that is faster than the 3G speeds I would get. So there was no point letting the B818 fall back to 3G as I have better available.
The same isn't true between 4G and 4G+...the 4G speed is still better than my ADSL. So I leave the B818 to sort that bit out.
bunchofkeys said:
What can i do with the LTW Band section to allow for a "better" connection/faster speeds? If anything.
Thanks
Thanks
Edited by bunchofkeys on Sunday 18th April 15:21
Having watched the above, when forcing bands your reliant on the masts local to you and the bands that they transmit on.
I've been up in the loft today, mainly heaving my new unraid server up there
I then took the time to re wire everything and spent a little while moving the router about mm by mm. Got it to a consistent decent speed now, it was not in a good place before I think.
All the below is off WiFi, the first 2 from the b3111, 2nd 2 from my wireless access point the other side of the network
I haven't tried it from anything wired yet but I reckon that's about as good as it'll be.
Has anyone had any success with 3 at upgrade time? Having done some thought I'm minded to just renew my contract when it's up in a month or so and maybe focus on the router a bit more. Either a cheaper renewal and no new kit/buy the router thats been mentioned above or negotiate a renewal including the router for ideally the same £22/month...
Its the zero cap that's the deciding factor for me, I've never hit a download cap, never had a letter for torrents etc... To get anything the same via the copper wire (no fttp here) I'm at £40ish a month
I then took the time to re wire everything and spent a little while moving the router about mm by mm. Got it to a consistent decent speed now, it was not in a good place before I think.
All the below is off WiFi, the first 2 from the b3111, 2nd 2 from my wireless access point the other side of the network
I haven't tried it from anything wired yet but I reckon that's about as good as it'll be.
Has anyone had any success with 3 at upgrade time? Having done some thought I'm minded to just renew my contract when it's up in a month or so and maybe focus on the router a bit more. Either a cheaper renewal and no new kit/buy the router thats been mentioned above or negotiate a renewal including the router for ideally the same £22/month...
Its the zero cap that's the deciding factor for me, I've never hit a download cap, never had a letter for torrents etc... To get anything the same via the copper wire (no fttp here) I'm at £40ish a month
Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff