I’m pretty sure the WinBox band selection drop down fields don’t have priorities associated with them and the multiple fields are simply or’ed meaning say B1 or B3, or B20 etc. Is this correct?
I’d like is to ask the dish to prioritise B1 first, then fall back to B3 then B20. However due to signal strength anomalies the modem will often pick B3 over B1 and even choose the ‘wrong’ mast on B3, in fact a mast directly behind the dish!
I’ve written a ‘hefty’ (for me) script which automates:
1: Check B1 connectivity, if dropped change to B3 - this would indicate the cell/mast has gone off-line (yes this has happened several times now) and an alternative cell/mast offering B3 can be negotiated.
The next day (typical time for EE to restore service), swap back to B1 and test again for service.
The local B1 cell provides the highest throughput, the others are shockingly poor but better than nothing when the primary mast is out.
I suspect I could also cell lock until no service, then free the cell lock, but that becomes even more code heavy.
Can WinBox instruct the modem to prioritise bands?
Mobile broadband networks (LTE, 5G) don’t work the way you seem to think.
There are two major modes: idle and active. When device is in idle mode, device can choose to “listen” to any cell it wants (but has to perform Tracking Area Update if it selects to listen to cell which is in different TA than previously listened one). When transitioning from idle to active mode, it does communicate to “self selected” cell initially.
When in active mode, the whole cell selection decission making is on network side. Device is ordered to perform measurements on a list of particular cells (same band or different bands) and devices repirt back measurement results. Devices can not insert measurements of cells not on “measurement order list”, they can only omit measurements of certain cells (and that’s what cell lock or band lock does: it filters out measurements … or in csee of band lock it doesn’t measure anything on “non-allowed” bands). Omission of measurements does affect the cell selection because network can not order client device to use cells which it doesn’t “hear” (or doesn’t want to hear or doesn’t want to admit it’s actually hearing). And preference on different bands are also set and enforced on network side as set by network operator. Device can not “prefer” some cells, meadurements can either be rrported or not (and reporting order doesn’t matter). The only way of “enforcing prefrence” against network “will” would be to report worse values for “non-preferred” cells, but that would have to be done in a smart way (to undo network’s preferences) … but each MNO can set network preferences and priorities differently, so there is no universal way of “un-preferring” cells.
And after everything is measured and evaluated, network orders device to hand-over / reselect to new cell (or add a cell to CA list). If device doesn’t adhere to order, then network can (and mostly does) break connection … which causes a short communication pause on higher layers.
I hate to tell you, but it’s your provider (or tower specifically) who chooses which band(s) it wants you yo utilise at any one time. Best we can do is narrow down the number of bands for your provider to choose from.
For example, you could tell your MT to only use bands 1, 3 & 20. But your provider chooses which one (or combo of if they allow CA access), and that may change throughout the day depending on tower load. If you really want to peg back the offerings, you could just choose, say B1, which would limit your provider to only using that band. However, if the tower goes under load on that same band, your throughput will also be degraded.
What I usually do is test first each band on offer from the tower and work out the best of two (or three) and go with those. I’ve found in some cases, B1 outperforms B3 and B7 might be as good as B1, so then I would just leave B3 out of the equasion altogether. Often in a case like that B1 becomes primary and B7 becomes CA. Sometimes it’s B1 that is worse than B3 so naturally you’d use B3 over B1, etc…
Probably not what you wanted to hear, but hope it’s helpful anyway.
Really interesting to hear network chooses and how that functions. I’m rural and have three local masts on EE, only 1 provides decent bandwidth (50Mbs dl / 20Mbs up) in my specific location. This mast also happens to be the only mast offering B1 (it also supports B3 and ca B3 which isn’t bad when bonded) but to ‘force’ this mast, I manually select B1 from the WinBox drop-down only, otherwise the dish has a habit of wondering to other mast B3’s (as you’ve explained). Setting only B1 manually works well, until this mast goes offline, then the dish cannot find other B1s as both the other 2 masts support B3/B20 only. This leaves no internet obvs.
This is why I initially lock to B1 for dishes that wonder to B3 picking up masts with limited throughput, then on multiple ping failure move to B3, that way the dish will search for one of the other masts on B3 and provide some internet which is better than none.
So in conclusion, WinBox cannot prioritise multiple bands as it’s the carrier who manages this and is why it’s an ‘or’ function. The only way to force a mast/cell lock is using cell lock. This of course has similar issues when the mast goes off-line, it will need resetting enabling the dish to search and the following day cell lock back to original cell assuming mast has been repaired.