Hello,
I purchased the MikroTik ATL 5G R16 to replace my Iskra 4G antennas so I could finally enjoy 5G speeds. I consulted my mobile operator and got the location of the optimal cell tower. On cellmapper.net I can also see that tower and the bands that cover the area around my home. I should have access to n28 (good) and possibly n78. The latest RouterOS update is installed.
Then, in the interface settings under LTE, I see a list of networks from 3G to 5G. I started by disabling everything except 5G, and I got… a complete lack of internet. I enabled 4G (LTE) + 5G and got a speed of 300/3. I disabled 5G and left only LTE, and got 60/3. And here’s my question: am I understanding correctly that because the uplink speed is so low, I’m unable to connect in pure 5G mode?
And a second question: when I enable the cell scanner, I see cell IDs that I don’t see from my mobile operator. Is it possible that, despite selecting a specific operator, I’m still seeing other operators’ cells in scanner mode?
Sorry for the noob questions — this is my first time working with such a complex device. Before this, I only used simpler SoHo modems.
Your MO is probably providing 5G with 5G NSA deployment using 4G cell, that’s why 4G must be enabled on lte interface, I think with only 5G enabled works with 5G SA deployments only, check that when connected which data class and primary band cell is used in cellular section of lte interface.
What speeds are you expecting? Upload is typically slower, but that does seem slower with a 300Mb/s download. The slow upload could be related to MTU, especially if doing something Ookla speediest. I'd check the logs for any message about "network MTU" being being mismatched; these MTU log entries only show up when LTE first comes up.
Band n28 is same as band 28 on 4G - 700MHz band with (relatively) low bandwidth but very good range/coverage ... and using it as 5G instead of 4G won't make much of a difference in context of speed.
Band n78 is 3.5GHz TDD band ... with much shorter range than traditional 4G bands. Its effect much depends on signal strength of that particular cell you're getting. But if the distance between your ATL and cell tower is not really short, then the signal strength is likely on the border of being useful ... and will contribute for DL speeds but will be unusable for UL (user equipment is limited to much lower Tx power than base stations). Which is consistent with what @optio reported.
@optio Thank you for the clarification — it helped me understand better why 5G depends on 4G.
Also, I’ve been running tests for several days now. The thing is, I live in a rural area between two cell towers, both roughly the same distance from me. The distances are 2.8 km and 3.4 km. There are also tall trees around, which I think might be affecting the radio signal quality.
@Amm0
With two Iskra 4G+ antennas, I usually get around 80/40. I was simply surprised by the difference in speeds I got with the new antenna. I would’ve been fine if the upload speed had stayed the same, but it ended up being about ten times lower. I ran a lot of tests — enabling and disabling different interfaces, pointing the antenna in different directions — and the best result I was able to get was 400/15.
I checked the logs for the MTU error you mentioned, but there are no errors. There’s only an informational line that shows mtu=1500.
Could you clarify something: if I disable and then enable the interface in its settings, can this error appear? Or, alternatively, will it show up if I reboot the device?
And one more question. If in the Cell Monitor I’m seeing the following picture — does this mean I selected the correct bands in the interface settings?
@mkx
What do you think - should I keep band 28 enabled for both 4G and 5G, or only for 5G?
And there’s one more thing I don’t understand.Through the LTE Cell Monitor in the interface settings, I see many bands, and as already told me, monitor may include all operators. But maybe you know is there any way to show only the bands belonging to my operator?
Disabling the LTE interface, should cause the log message - if there is one. This may be a problem with US carriers, which all use a lower MTU, but you'll see a message like this: mbim: network advertises lower mtu: 1428
if there is an MTU mismatch.
Approx. 1.3km, you are much far, that’s why your antenna tx signal cannot reach cell with enough power to have better upload, see your NR RSRP. Unless you can somehow amplify signal above regulations you are out of luck with 5G for upload.
There are two things in the mix: modem which is the active part, does Tx and Rx and chooses bands and technologies ... and antenna which is passive thing and interfaces between antenna cable and air.
Iskra are only antennas and are very good. In your previous setup, you connected those using antenna cables to some modem (and so far you didn't mention what was it, it seems it was a 4G modem). ATL is a combo of antennas and modem. While modem is pretty good (after all, it supports 5G and all the various bands) it sucks as antenna compared to Iskra ... specially at lower frequencies, which in your environment (reasonably far from cell tower with trees on the way) is a game changer.
Regarding the screenshot with 4G/5G status: all shown bands are pretty high frequency (B3: 1.8GHz, B7: 2.6GHz, N78: 3.5GHz) so given your description of environment I'm not surprised by the lack of uplink performance (your ATL simply doesn't have the Tx power to overcome all the attenuation between it and cell tower). And no, I don't think that technology selection (4G vs. 5G) for band 28 would make any difference (because given same physical constraints, i.e. RSRP, RSRQ, bandwidth, etc., they both yield same performance ... main difference between 5G and 4G comes from additional bands, wider bandwidth and higher MIMO ranks, none of which works in low frequency bands such as B28).
I got it. I live in Estonia (EU), and it seems that everything works fine here with an MTU of 1500 - at least I’m not getting any errors when disabling LTE interface.
In my previous setup, I used a Huawei B525 + 2 Iskra antennas, which handled 4G speeds quite well. I’m still using this as a backup channel while I’m configuring my new equipment. And this setup is currently giving me the following results.
When my mobile operator started upgrading the network in my area to 5G, I began looking for options. I purchased two sets of Iskra antennas: 2× Iskra P60 + 2× Iskra P62, along with a Teltonika TRB500 5G/4G gateway. But the problem was that these antennas only have a 10-meter cable that’s permanently attached (soldered) to the each antenna. But I needed about 25 meters to run the cable along the roof and into the house where I planned to place the gateway. In my situation, I would’ve needed to buy four high-quality cable extenders, plus figure out how to properly weatherproof the connections. So… that’s when I discovered Mikrotik’s new device - ATL 5G R16, which fits my needs perfectly. It combines the antenna and modem in a single housing, and I can use a regular outdoor Cat6 FTP cable, which can be any length and is easy to run. At least much easier than four Iskra cables. On paper, it looked good too: the Iskra antennas had a gain of 10–12 dBi, while the ATL 5G R16 has 16 dBi.
You already know the results.
The only thing I’m waiting for now is the technician who will mount the antenna on the roof. At the moment, for testing, I’ve just attached it to the side of the house. I’m hoping the results I shared earlier will improve once the antenna is raised about 5–6 meters above its current height.
Only as a side note, not really-really, the 10 m those antennas came with are already a lot, with 25 m, good as it might be the cable/extension, losses along the cable would have been impressive and likely you would have had a too low signal.
Yes, you’re absolutely right. There was a way to route the 10-meter cables more conveniently, but it would have required damaging the freshly renovated rooms. I even consulted with Iskra engineers about using extension cables.
Here’s what they told me:
“If you have a good or average 5G signal outdoors (up to –95 dBm), don’t worry about the additional losses in coaxial extensions. At 10 meters, the loss is about 4.5 dB at 2100 MHz — see the attachment. So if 5 meters isn’t enough for you, you can use 10-meter extensions.”
It includes antenna gain chart ... and as you can see, its gain at lower frequencies is crap. It's fine at mid frequencies and I guess ATL 5G will have decent gain for higher (3.5GHz) frequencies as well. So if you can live without relying on low frequencies, then ATL should do fine. But if you do need low bands (bands 20 and 28), then ATL will probably suck.
Regarding antenna cables: Iskra engineers underestimated importance of having decent signal levels at modem port. Most LTE devices have sensitivity at around -115dBm and RSRP lower than that doesn't allow (almost) any service. And for decent service RSRP has to be above -95dBm or so. If you need 25m of cable with attenuation of around 5dB per 10 meters, that gives 12dB of cable loss. If outside signal is already as low as -95dBm, then one needs antenna with at least 12dBi gain (over whole used frequency range, e.g. between 650MHz and 3.8GHz) just to offset antenna cable losses ... and such antennas are already hard to find.
